


The Cursed Hand

by Dulcidyne



Series: Edwardian Thedas [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Drama & Romance, Edwardian Period, F/M, Fairy Tale Curses, Forbidden Love, High society scandal, Historical Metaphors, Historical References, Investigations, Liberal use of endnotes for historical tidbits, Slow Burn, Suspense, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-15
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-03-13 03:59:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 76,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3366956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dulcidyne/pseuds/Dulcidyne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time the girl summoned the demons from the sky, she was barely a week past the fateful day when she received both her name and her curse...or so they tell it in Ostwick. But Ferelden Expeditionary Force veteran, Cullen Rutherford, doesn’t believe in fairytale curses. He’s determined to root out the occult movement sabotaging sanatoria across Thedas, even if it means working together with the most feared woman in Ostwick.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: The Curse

The first time the girl summoned the demons from the sky, she was barely a week past the fateful day when she received both her name and her curse. 

She was the fifth child, the fifth girl at that, and most--her parents included--were of the opinion that four girls were already more than enough for one family. So while the naming celebration was as brilliant an affair as anyone could expect from the seventh most illustrious family in the city (or was it eighth?), no one paid much mind to the cooing infant in the bassinet. Given the inability to understand the imperious glances cast over the crystal rims of champagne flutes, it was no matter to her. Neither did she care about the Tevinter emissary and his ostentatious party muttering under their breath over the indignity of being forced to share a celebration with a drooling infant arrived too early into the arms of their distant relations.  

The old woman arrived into the glittering ballroom with no announcement from the servant at the door. She had not been invited. The shabby homespun of her dress, soaked through with rain, made for poor comparison to the fashionable array of pastel flounces spinning like open parasols around the polished marble. It wasn’t long before her presence was noted with a degree of scandalized shock and awe. But before Trevelyan could summon his indignation up from the dregs of his wineglass, the aged and crooked spine was already bending over the bassinet, one clawed hand grasping a strange round device that sparked with green electricity.

From the depths of yellow satin, chubby pink hands reached towards the burst of color.

In an explosion of light both crone and device vanished. Some insisted that the in the moments before, ancient lips chanted an elvish incantation...but none of the accounts were very reliable given the chaos that ensued. Several women, including Lady Trevelyan, had taken to screaming and fluttering into pathetic heaps onto the floor, revived only by smelling salts. In truth, only one had thought to check the contents of the ruined bassinet immediately--the young Tevinter lad who had accompanied the dignitary’s entourage. But when the furor had diminished, the boy had disappeared and with him, the Tevinters. By the time anyone else bothered to look, the child was found sleeping soundly, nestled in char and ash, looking hale and whole save for the vivid green mark sputtering on the back of one chubby hand.

Afterwards everyone felt rather foolish for being taken in so. It was quite decided that the Tevinter relations had elected to play some callous prank, involving the pyrotechnic prowess the country was well known for. Some mixture of chemicals, some mysterious marvel. Many laughed, admitting that they were ‘in on it all along’, and had recognized the old woman as one of the actresses who performed with other illusionists in the theater.

The physician diagnosed the strange mark as nothing more than the result of a serious electrical burn. Quite normal, it would vanish in a few weeks after application with his medicinal salve. Everyone promptly resolved that was the end of it.

But the servants, like most common folk given to superstition and belief in fantastical things like magic and curses, muttered the Chant of Light under their breath and crushed petals of Andraste’s Grace into sachets secreted away between the pillows of the child’s crib. One of the maids was particularly fervent in her belief and, after a week of devout contemplating, she stole out with the child in the dead of night and attempted the old folk cure for such things.

However normally predisposed to a happy temperament, the child did not at all like the frigid cold of the mountain stream that ran in the quiet wood just a mile from the estate. It was a hearty and shrill cry she let out before being submerged entirely in the waters. The maid had barely lifted the screaming infant out when the rift opened up in the sky and a creature stepped out to snap the woman up and break her spine cleanly in two.

It isn’t known what would have happened next if the man traveling to Kirkwall hadn’t shown up at that exact moment, perhaps hearing the cry of the infant from the distant road. He slew the creature with his pistol and plucked the soaking child from the mossy bank. A physician of some skill, he was able to resuscitate the girl and take her back to her parents.

He stayed on for several weeks, being something of an expert on ailments of the unnatural variety, and it was thanks to his expertise that the youngest girl was not immediately sent off to the Ostwick sanitorium despite the mark that refused to fade from her hand even after weeks of due diligence applying salve. Under his advisement, the Trevelyans replaced the serving staff with those more experienced with keeping strange occurrences discreet.

By then, the tale of the curse had spread through the town--with dramatic consequences. Weapons in hand, the townspeople combed the surrounding lands, seeking twisted justice for the young infant Trevelyan and the elven magic that he scarred her small hand. Not before long, they combed the city streets. After days of bloodshed, the teyrn conceded to public outcry. The alienage was torn down, its inhabitants cast out and chased from Ostwick.

But their fear was not sated and as the cursed child grew, they watched her closely.  She was demon-touched, they knew, and she would bring down a terrible host upon them all.

 


	2. The Soldier and the Seeker

Captain Cullen Rutherford flickered the lid of a dead man's pocketwatch with his thumb and watched the hand tick further past 12 between flashes of gold. The train had arrived at the station on the hour exactly and it wasn’t like his sister to be late. Not Mia with the precisely folded letters free of ink splotches and regularly dated at weekly intervals. His own correspondence was much less diligent, but he had been sure to mail the last announcing his arrival to South Reach. Frowning, he tucked the watch back into his serge uniform pocket and tried to ignore the clucking whispers of the two matrons with nothing better to do than gossip while their driver loaded the motorcar with mountains of luggage.

“Rather dashing in person, quite like the picture...do you think he would come to tea? My daughter could certainly make the most of it.”

Now _that_ was a tone he had come too passing familar with. One year into the war, the Ferelden Expeditionary Force had papered every inch of Denerim with patriotic posters featuring his likeness and the words _'Private Cullen Rutherford. A Ferelden Hero! 1 man defeats 10 Orlesians. Have you no wish to emulate the splendid bravery of your fellow countryman? Join a regiment today!'_. Three years into the war, in a Varric Tethras directed moving picture, Alistair Theirin assumed his name and part in the battle that had earned Cullen his officer's rank through the mere virtue of surviving it. Even now that the war was over, Cullen couldn't escape his own image. Ferelden's newspapers had plastered him all over their front pages,  _'A Hero Returns Home!  Maker Save the Queen Says Captain Rutherford'._ He neither asked for, wanted, or deserved any of this fame. But fame, and the many invitations to tea that it entailed, refused to give him up. 

Cullen ducked his head and pulled up on the collar of his military greatcoat but it was no use. Little could protect him from their scheming now that he'd been spotted. Andraste preserve him from matchmaking mothers, the next calling card shoved his way would be torn to pieces and set aflame. Forgetting himself, he muttered the thought aloud--loudly enough that the women let out a pair of offended gasps and whirled around in a flurry of mutual indignation, sparing him their attentions.

But he was to have no peace, apparently, as a feminine voice at his other side asked almost immediately after, “Captain Rutherford?”  

Feeling sufficiently henpecked by the opposite sex, Cullen huffed, “I...yes, but please, the title is completely unnecessary. A technicality at this point.”

The damn war had ended after all. But he didn’t add that and was glad he didn’t when he looked up at the woman who had approached him. No fluttering socialite extending an invitation for afternoon tea, this one.

She was dressed impeccably in a suit of tailored burgundy wool that obviously cost a pretty sum, even to his untrained eye. The crisp white collar emphasized the decisive jut of her scarred jaw as she looked down at him with cool regard. Glittering at her lapel was the golden pin of the all-seeing eye.

“As you like,” she replied, “I have something to discuss with you. Perhaps a cup of tea at the cafe while you wait for your sister?"

He did not ask how an agent of the Seekers knew who he was waiting for. Neither did he ask if her organization had a hand in whatever delayed Mia because he already knew it to be true. Instead, he found himself bemused by the sheer lunacy of it. An invitation to tea after all. He did not expect to ever receive one from a woman carrying not one but two handguns, the bulk of which were cleverly disguised by the cut of her suit jacket. Sobering, he reigned in the perverse twist of humor lingering at the corner of his scarred lip. This was no laughing matter. He had no idea what she wanted with him and what she had done to ensure his compliance. The Seekers of Truth served the Chantry, yes, but their reputation was one entrenched in fear.

“My sister is unharmed?” he asked.

The question affronted, if the curl of her lip was any evidence. "Of course. I’m not here to force your cooperation.”

“Well then, I suppose I wouldn’t mind taking refreshment in the meanwhile.”

How else was he supposed to get to the bottom of what the Seekers of Truth wanted with him?

The cafe was full of travellers, a din of hurried conversations. Cullen spotted more than a few men in serge, jumping with every clatter of a cup against a china saucer. He grimaced in empathy, drawing a finger over the metal filigree of the watch tucked in his pocket. The Seeker led him to a small table by the pane of glass outlooking the rest of the station. It was somehow secluded from the press of feathered hats and bustling waitstaff and as he sat down, he noted that the noise was substantially lower through some miracle of acoustics.

After they ordered their tea--or tonic water in his case--she reached into her faintly pinstriped jacket and produced a small, stoppered bottle the size of his thumb. Inside tumbled two pale pink tablets.

“Am I right to assume this looks familiar?” she asked, handing the bottle over for him to inspect closer. He didn’t need to but he took it from her anyway. For a moment, he smelled disinfectant mingling with scent of buttered toast from the next table over. His stomach turned and as if on cue, the server arrived with their drinks. After taking a sip of his water to quell the seething turn of his lost appetite, Cullen set the bottle back down between them. 

“Yes.”

“Would it surprise you to learn that one of these was collected from Kinloch Sanitarium?"

He raised an eyebrow.  _Not at all._ “Should it?”

The sharp angles of her face considered him, “Perhaps it would if you knew that only one is the genuine thing. The other, the one from Kinloch, is a sugar pill.”

Gathering on the glass, beads of condensation pooled down between the joints of his fingers. Their chill drew all the intensity of his focus, leaving him hyperaware of the rivulet forming in the crease of his palm. It was shockingly cold, numbing almost. Releasing the glass, he wiped his palm against the lace-trimmed napkin at his lap as the numb spread from the tips of his fingers up through his arm, creeping through his body like anaesthetic. The war was long over but that bottle was a mortar bomb at the back of his mind, prying up horrors from his buried past. 

“When did you collect it?”  
  
Sugar pills. His mind turned the words over and over with all the detachment of a watchmaker settling into place the final gear that made the whole thing whirr and spin.

“After the...influenza killed nearly every patient and doctor in the facility.”

Her strange pause at the word told him everything he needed to know. There had been no influenza, no matter what the newspaper headlines claimed and this woman was well aware of that fact.

“Mr. Rutherford, we have been investigating how someone managed to replace the medication given to the patients and why. So far, we’ve traced placebo substitutions to at least five other sanitoria in across Thedas. We've done our best to minimize the damage. But..it is complicated.”

Unflappable till this point, she ran a hand through her shortly cropped hair in frustration, “To be honest with you, we have one good lead on getting to the bottom of all this and it makes no sense at all. It’s...fantastical to say the least."

Of course it was. Why should anything make the slightest bit of sense? His thoughts gyred in precise, unhurried revolutions while his nerve-dead fingers suddenly spasmed in his lap.

“In Ostwick, there is a woman with a cursed hand. The locals say that with it, she can summon demons. Physically.  We were able to confirm at least two suspicious deaths involving the household staff."  
  
Irritation flickered through him. If the Seeker needed a medical professional to apprehend this 'cursed' woman, she would have to look elsewhere. 

“I hardly think a Seeker would need to approach me on this. It's clear what you're dealing with."  
  
_Afflicted,_ people called them. The Chant of Light called them mages.

“I would agree with you, but multiple medical examinations have indicated that she is not afflicted. It will be impossible to know without first-hand observation but this is secondary to what we think her involvement may be."

All at once, he was tired of their meeting.  The woman was driving at something but she was taking her time to get to it. Time his false calm didn't have. Oddly, he had the distinct impression that she was just as annoyed with the loitering around the point as he was.

“So what is it you want with me then?”

She leaned back in her chair suddenly, relieved to reach the crux of it all. “We need your help. Somehow this woman is tied up with what happened at Kinloch.”

The cafe was suddenly very loud, ringing in his ears like bad tinnitus. “I’m not a physician anymore," he said, "I'm just a soldier. Soon, not even that.”

His future stretched out in front of him, mundane and unremarkable. He'd already resigned himself to it.  

Steely-eyed, she lifted her chin. “No. You are a hero, like it or not. And you’re the one of the few who witnessed what really happened at the sanitorium, which means you are one of the few best able to stop the same thing from happening again.”

Taking a sip of what was undoubtedly cold tea, she continued, “I’m asking on behalf of the Divine Justinia. You would be in a special investigative unit on behalf of the Chantry and you would be acting with complete autonomy under the guise of a diplomatic envoy. I’ll admit, your fame would lend us some credibility but that is merely an added benefit.”

Cullen was silent for a moment, hands fisting and unfisting in the lace despite his best efforts to still them.  “You’re asking me to go to Ostwick. The day I'm returning home.”

She nodded, draining what remained in the porcelain cup before pulling a card from her vest pocket and standing to leave. “I’m asking you to think on it. Unfortunately, we are pressed for time. You do not have long to do so.”

Placing the card on the table and straightening her jacket, she continued, “ If you decide to aid us in this investigation, your train ticket will be waiting at the office. We depart for Amaranthine at 4 o’clock. Today.”

She walked away and left him alone at the table.

Her calling card was stiff in his trembling fingers; creme stock, elaborate scrollwork curling around the edges, flowing silver script embossed into the paper. Cassandra Pentaghast.

He sat with it clasped in his unsteady hands and watched the influx of people beyond the plate glass window. How long he watched, hands shaking, he did not know. It felt like hours, days. After an eternity, he saw the familiar gleam of blonde hair twisted up into a sensible chignon among the crowds. His sister, arrived at last.  

* * *

Cullen made his way over just as another train pulled into the station, a massive whir of churning metal whipping up the air to mingle into the hot columns of coal ash billowing from the engine compartments. A bell dinged, signifying the impending surge of even more bodies onto the platform.  She stood apart from the chaos, smoking a cigarette. There was another woman with her, frowning and speaking rapidly.

“Oh! What a disaster, I should have gone instead.You barely told him anything at all!”

Tapping the ash from her cigarette, Cassandra made a disgusted noise. “I’m not completely incompetent, Josephine. There was no point in discussing all the insignificant details.”

The other woman sighed, jotting down a note in the pad of paper clutched against the decorative gold braiding weaving around the edges of her black gloves.

“But you just came right out and said it. You didn’t even mention anything that would incentivize a rationally thinking person to--”

As neither seemed to register his presence any time soon, he cleared his throat. “I’m assuming there are some forms I’ll be needing to fill out.”

There were always forms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical Notes:
> 
> 1) Cullen's propaganda poster quote is taken nearly verbatim from an Irish propaganda poster from WW1 about Sergeant Michael O'Leary, V.C.
> 
> 2) Black and white film was on the scene as early as 1900. Film as propaganda didn't feature really heavily in WWI, unlike WWII, but war films did exist at this time (D.W. Griffith's Hearts of the World starring Lillian Gish). Charlie Chaplin actually wrote and starred in some of his own. I've decided that Varric's talents in the game translated nicely as a film director and not just because I'm tickled by the idea of DA:2's ragtag group of miscreants as film stars in this AU (The greatest moving picture the world has ever seen! Varric Tethras presents Marian Hawke as an intrepid explorer discovering danger and wonder from the streets of Kirkwall to the Deep Roads in 'Tale of the Champion'. A Sundermount Production.)


	3. The Lawyer and the Spymaster

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer and content warning: this fic contains references to historical treatments for mental illnesses. See endnotes for references.

There was indeed paperwork. Manila folders stuffed full with forms for pay, forms for his official position within a shadow arm of a religious organization with more political power than most countries, forms conferring security clearances, forms ensuring his silence--even a form for the return of his greatcoat and uniform in postage from a foreign principality. By the time he was done with them all, his right hand was cramping and he was more than a little irritable. Maker’s breath if he never signed another piece of paper again, it would be too soon.

The Divine's legal counsel and ambassador, Josephine Montilyet, took the final folder and smiled sympathetically from the bench positioned on the other side of the private passenger compartment. It was cushioned in green velvet brocade and a considerable degree more luxurious than the coach car’s wooden benches that he’d spent hours on just this morning. Beside her, Cassandra stared out the window. After a perfunctory greeting on the platform, she declined to say a word to either of them.

“Good, now that all that is out of the way.” Josephine extracted a briefcase from the luggage compartment underneath the seat and set it on her lap.

Reaching into the reticule dangling from her wrist, she produced a brass key and fitted it into the keyhole at the front of the case. “We will be meeting the rest of our party in Amaranthine. I received a telegram from Leliana this morning that the doctor arrived just last night.”

With a decisive flick of her wrist, the briefcase snapped open and she withdrew three bound folders and handed them over. “These should keep you occupied until then.”

Cullen unwound the black twine from one, noting the symbols stamped across corresponding to his newly minted security clearance, and began sifting through. For a moment the compartment was silent save for the rhythmic rumble of the train hurtling east.

“I don’t suppose you have a tuxedo in that duffel?” Josephine suddenly asked, scrutinizing him beneath the brim of her smartly turned out hat. He was easily the shabbiest of all of them with his stubble and dirty fingernails. Luckily, he was never one to nurse wounded vanity overmuch and he bore up under her dissection with a mere fidget.

“No,” he replied drily, not comprehending why she would ask something so odd.

She frowned, retrieving the notepad and pen that seemed perpetually near her fingertips. “With the right paperwork, I can elongate your final leave by another two weeks. You’ll have to fill out a few more forms, of course. That should give us some time to have some suits done up, while you wear your uniform to some of the more casual social functions.”

This caught his attention, settling into his stomach like he’d just swallowed a stone. “I’m sorry, did you say social functions?”

“Oh yes!” her eyes took on a delighted gleam that only made the weight in his stomach worsen. "Your presence will give us an even better chance to gain access to the Trevelyan's directly. Considering how close-lipped the staff is, it is a remarkable opportunity.”

It was quite obvious now what the ‘diplomatic envoy’ guise entailed. In his mind he had pictured a variant of the liaison assignments he’d performed after the war ended. Most had simply involved a great deal of standing about in rooms with overlarge tables while reporters snapped photographs of military officials signing documents.

He caught the wry twist of Cassandra’s mouth reflected in the window and remembered the conversation on the platform about ‘insignificant details’. Maker, what had he gotten himself into?

Rather than giving in to the temptation to quit the compartment and forget this entire day ever happened by getting off the train at the first possible opportunity, he focused on the documents in the open folder. From deep within the stack, a paper slipped out from its clip. He saw a familiar scrawl in faded ink beneath blocky typewritten text and the rest of the train compartment distorted, curling away at the edges like celluloid held over flame.

 _Patient Solona Amell exhibiting symptoms of nervous disorder resistant to medication. 500 mg potassium bromide solution to be administered daily until symptoms subside. Possible candidate for electrical current therapy._  
_Dr. Greagoir.  
_ _Chief of Medicine._

Memory was strange. Most of what he remembered from Kinloch were fuzzy half-recollections; overblown exposures of degraded tintype. But some memories remained clear amid all the lyrium-hazed photo plates. He thought that over time their pictures would fade, their lines would blur until they finally dissolved into the bright blue of forgetting. But they never did. This never did.

He clutched the paper between his thumb and forefinger and the feeling of it in his hands at that very moment overlapped like a ghostly double image over another--much older.

_She was concentrating. He could tell because she had gone utterly still, perched up by the windows that never opened. Sunlight streamed around her, setting her fiery gold and translucent against the glass. Despite himself, he must have made a noise because the moment slipped away and she was looking up at him._

_“Dr. Rutherford?”_

_He heard himself stutter and knew that he was blushing furiously. “P---please, just...just call me Cullen. I’m only a medical student.”_

A tremor shook through his hand and the paper with Dr. Greagoir’s diagnosis crumpled up against his fingers. The noise echoed, too loudly in his ears, sounding lower and deeper than it should have, like the low vibration of metal on metal. Looking down, he saw that he had nearly ripped the sheet in two.

“Is something wrong?”

Cullen released the paper with a jerk and met Josephine’s concern with a calm that did nothing to betray the sick lurch in his chest or the acid bite of adrenaline on his tongue. The beginnings of a headache already lingered around his temples like a promise.

“No, just a spasm of the muscle.”

Withdrawing his cigarette case and lighter from his overcoat pocket, Cullen carefully set aside the folder so as to not drop ash onto it and stared out the window at the blurring landscape until the tremor in his fingers finally subsided.

His head was still a dull, pulsating throb by the time they reached the outskirts of Amaranthine, but he had managed to finish two of the folders despite it. Their contents had confirmed some of his suspicions but left him with far more questions than answers.

Josephine had gone to the dining car, leaving him in complete silence with Cassandra, who was absorbed with a book. She had taken pains to conceal the cover from his view, leading him to draw the most amusing conclusion possible about the subject matter.

“Miss Pentaghast…” he started.

“Cassandra.”

“Cassandra. Could I ask your opinion on all this?”

She shot him a look that demanded clarification and he gestured towards the paperwork in his lap. “This occult movement…anthroposophism”

Surreptitiously slipping her novel into the fold of the cushion, she frowned deeply. "Ridiculous pretension. They should simply call it what it is instead of dressing it up in such a way."

"I took it as an attempt to distinguish themselves from the typical associations that come from expressing a literal belief in the Chant of Light."  
  
The typical associations being: poverty, a lack of formal education, and the unfashionable variety of superstition that did not involve Tevinter charlatans communicating with spirits in the sitting rooms of the social elite. Cullen knew first-hand what happened when spirits communicated and none of it belonged in an opulent dinner party.

"It is exactly that," Cassandra huffed, "the movement is very fashionable in Orlesian high society, but only to a superficial extent. A magician's party tricks, seances, theatrical performances, that sort of thing."

From his experience with Orlesian fashion whims, Cullen fully comprehended the meaning of her pronounced eye roll. After all, he had experienced the dubious pleasure of mushroom-flavoured chocolates.

"But yes, they champion the idea that, rather than suffering from delusion brought on by 'weaked morality'--as is claimed by the medical establishment--the so-called afflicted are gifted with a connection to the spiritual realm of the Maker. If nurtured properly, this connection can be used to manipulate the physical world. Magic, in so many unecessary words. Those of us high enough within the Chantry heirarchy to know the truth of it did not feel the movement was serious enough to merit any  _real_ intervention. But in the Free Marches, anthroposophism has since developed into something more militant in nature and now it is simply too late to try to suppress it directly without validating the truth and inciting mass hysteria. We’ve tracked the majority of the radical pockets to Free Marcher cities along the coast--Kirkwall, Ostwick, Hercinia, and Wycome.”

City lights bloomed in the darkness beyond the window, bright streaks in the dark as they hurtled towards Amaranthine. Cullen was silent for a moment, watching the tracking paths of gaslights in the distance.

“And you suspect Adelina Trevelyan and the missing patients from Kinloch are caught up in one of these radical groups?”  he asked after a moment, thoughts lingering on the memory of golden hair and clear blue eyes.

“Many cities in the Free Marches lack mandatory medical testing for school aged children and lack trained professionals. Anyone with magical abilities attempting to escape placement in the sanitoria often end up in the port cities. They typically fall into the radical side of the movement. And of course, there is the timing with the surviving patients...”

Yes, he timing was significant. After Kinloch, the other placebo substitutions had occurred only in the past few years and the last known sighting of Solona Amell and the other patients had been just over four years ago on a ship departing from Highever to the Marches. It certainly offered a convincing connection between Kinloch and the radicalists. 

Before he could say any more, the door to the compartment opened and Josephine’s dress was brushing over the polished but worn leather of his boots. She dropped a cloth napkin onto his paperwork covered lap and presented Cassandra with a similar lacy bundle.

“I bought you both some rolls from the dining car. The Grand Hotel Amaranthine has a very talented chef, but I expect he’s been asleep for the past hour.”

Beyond the window, the station pulled into view as the train slowed to a stop. It was nearly deserted at the late hour, lamplight dripping puddles of yellow light on the empty platforms. Muffled by the glass, he heard the whine of a siren somewhere in the city. A wave of fatigue overcame him, reminding him that he had not slept for nearly a full day. He rubbed the back of his neck, pinching nerves that seemed to have retired before the rest of him.

Josephine cast her eyes on his progress. “Oh, excellent, you’re almost finished. Leliana will be pleased to be able to discuss some things before we leave tomorrow.”

“I haven’t read everything yet. Nothing of the information gathered on the Trevelyans,” he admitted.

“No matter,” Cassandra said, “it’s useless for the most part, outside of the financial records. We have next to nothing on her, just the parents and the sisters--all four of them. And we’ll hear our fill of the ridiculous gossip when we get there, of that I have no doubt.”

Josephine stood, pulling at the creases from her coat with a sound of disapproval. “Every detail helps.”

“Yes, but Leliana is overfond of irrelevant details,” Cassandra replied and furrowed her brow, peering out the window in distraction. The other passengers were beginning to disembark, spilling out onto the dimly lit platform.

Josephine, sensing her point would be lost on either of them, began gathering the folders back up from the bench. “We’ll be staying the remainder of the night at the Grand Hotel. It’s a pity we arrived so late. I think the Most Holy would have liked to meet you before we left. She’s on her way to Denerim now for the peace talks.”

The negotiations over reparations between Orlais and Ferelden were still all over the headlines. It had been a year and yet disputes remained and neither side seemed ready to capitulate. Divine Justinia’s intercession could not have come too soon.

Cassandra continued to search out the window and Cullen thought the sound of sirens was growing louder. Not because they were coming closer but because there were suddenly more of them.

Outside, from the darkness, a man emerged into the pool of lamplight, pushing and shoving aside the thin flow of late night passengers milling about the platform. He was shouting, but his voice was muffled by the both glass and chorus of offended mutters.

In the compartment, the air had gone thin and sharp. He could feel the electric tingle of it in his sinuses. Pushing Josephine away from the window, he began to shout a warning.

Cassandra turned away just before the glass exploded inward, flames and smoke licking up at the gaping metal where the window had been. For a moment, the world tipped, metal groaning as the bulk of the train recoiled in the tracks from the impact. Cullen slammed against the door frame of the compartment, bracing himself in the split second of frozen inertia before the weight of the car brought it back down again in a shuddering crash.

He lost no time ripping open the door and pressing Josephine out into the hallway. Coughing violently, Cassandra followed them, handkerchief pressed against her mouth, gun already free and in her other hand.

He heard screaming and the roar of flame but both sounded muffled, as if coming through layers of cotton stuffed into his ears. The noise of the blast had damaged them, but he did not judge it to be life-threatening and moved on to more pressing concerns, like the smoke pouring into the hallway.

It was quickly becoming impossible to see, his eyes tearing up and irritated from the fumes. Josephine pulled away from him, falling to her knees and reaching back into the compartment, grabbing blindly.

Before he could pull her back something glimmered to his right. He twisted to the side too slowly, feeling the knife catch on his sleeve, gouging a line across his forearm as Cassandra’s gun popped painfully loud against his left ear. He could hear nothing over the ringing in his twice damaged ears, but he glimpsed the upturned toe of a work boot on the floor through the billowing grey.

Cassandra was already shoving the other semi-automatic pistol at him and he barely had time to grab it from her before she stepped past him towards the form obscured by the smoke. She made to kneel down to check the body and he checked her with a hand at her elbow.

“We must leave!”

She was shaking her head and he could see that the side of her face was scored with cuts from the glass. Her words were mostly lost as she coughed into the handkerchief but he understood enough to realize that she intended to search the body.

Josephine was straightening up with the briefcase clutched in fingers bleeding from the broken glass covering the floor, her smile shaky but triumphant.

“There’s no time,” he shouted, “we must reach the exit before it becomes completely blocked off.”

By either knife-wielding assassins or fire, he did not add.

The blast had ripped through the side of the train and they were tripping over luggage and the shattered doorways twisting like wraiths in the thickness of the smoke. His handkerchief didn’t do much to filter the acrid burn of the ash and it was harder and harder not to stop whenever a paroxysm of coughing overcame him. But they made steady progress through the wreckage, Cassandra at the back and Josephine hemmed between them as he kept his eyes and gun trained on the smoke billowing up ahead.

When they finally reaching the back of the passenger car, Cullen thanked Andraste that the door was not in the same shape as the rest of the train and wrested it open. Air, cold and sweet whispered past and they dropped down onto the crunching gravel set between the tracks.

Cullen drew to the side of the train, straining his senses for the low hum of focused energy. But he could sense and see nothing in the haze. It’d been minutes since the last scream cut off over the crackle of the flames and now it was eerily silent save the sirens. They sounded a world away, far beyond the bitter char wrapping around the station in a suffocating cocoon.

Heat wafted across them and a man stepped out from the shadows. Cullen trained the gun on him but paused when the air remained silent. There was something off in his gait. Joints seized and shuddered in jerks and twitches, like a puppet on the strings of a poor puppeteer. Shambling forward, he stepped into the light cast by the flames and on his face was a look of absolute horror. Something whistled in the air and suddenly the fear went slack as a knife embedded itself into his neck. His own weapon dropped from limp fingers as he collapsed face-first into the gravel.

A flash of scarlet emerged from the haze and Josephine cried out “Leliana!” Cassandra lowered her weapon just enough to indicate that the woman approaching them was no threat and Cullen did the same.

She was hatless, pinned curls plastered against her neck and face, which was smeared over with ash. Giving them a terse nod, she knelt beside the body to retrieve her knife. It came free with a disturbing gurgling sound as the blood pulsed onto the gravel.

“What happened Leliana? What of the diversion?”

“It failed.”

She did not look up, intent on turning the man over so that she could reach the pockets of his tattered shirt. “They knew. Somehow.”

Josephine paled. “How is that possible?”

Finding nothing in the shirt, Leliana turned out the trouser pockets. A copper bounced out to trace a path through the puddle of blood spreading over the tracks.

Cassandra had picked up the weapon, barely more than a butter knife, and the unremarkable metal gleamed dully in the lamplight. Leliana glanced up at it.

“Yes, similar weapons on the others. They were all also elves,” she trailed off, rubbing the fabric of the workshirt between her fingers, “factory-made clothing from Ferelden but look...it’s new. They tried to make it look dirty and torn but there’s no actual wear on the fabric...”

Cullen itched to get out of the open and interrupted her, “Can we continue this conversation somewhere else?”

Somewhere with decent cover at least. Never did he think the day would come when he'd yearn for a trench. Years of bloodshed carried out in the massive furrows of mud had shaped his experiences in battle and without the familiar surroundings, the blood pooling at his feet made him feel as if a shell would come whistling down at any second.

Standing, she nodded. “Yes, that is wise. We have much to do before the night is over.”

Cassandra looked up. “We? Leliana, where is the Most Holy?”

The question halted the woman mid-stride and when she stopped, her voice was empty. “She is dead.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Anthroposophical Society is a real organization founded in 1913 that I sort of appropriated it for this story but this fictional version is not related to the real-life counterpart in any way beyond the goal of understanding 'spiritual science'.  
> -WWI's treatment of shell-shocked soldiers really marks the halmark of early psychiatric study as a branch of medical study. Prior to the formal treatment of shell shock (which often had psychosomatic symptoms), mental health was typically seen as an issue of morality, in that someone who suffered from a mental health disorder was amoral and deserved punishment (in the case of the soldiers, they were often accused of cowardice and shot for psychosomatic manifestations of their trauma) or religious instruction. It took some time for this mindset to change, even after psychiatric treatments began to gain traction. Which sounds strange, but even today, there are still treatment programs for the wide variety of impulse control disorders that emphasize weakness of character and religious instruction rather than vetted medical treatment regimens which much lower relapse rates. 
> 
> -Potassium bromide 'sleep therapy' was used during 1900s psychiatric care, as was 'electrical current therapy'. Early medical care in general is sort of a bag of well-intentioned but absolutely horrifying mix of unvetted theories and treatments. Just look at the early uses of heroin as a rehabilitation drug for opiate addicts, doctors claimed it was 'totally safe!'. I wanted to incorporate early psychiatric care in this fic because, while I dislike the association of mages with those who struggle with mental illness (the direct metaphor that is), I do think that the *treatment* of both by society at large do share a lot of chilling parallels. I know this is a controversial issue for some but I felt I couldn't ignore the history and I'm open to any asks on my tumblr, Dulcydine.


	4. The Doctor and the Addict

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last member of the envoy makes an appearance.

To his credit as a businessman, the cabbie’s reservations about taking on three still-smoldering customers were entirely put to rest as soon as Josephine produced a silver coin from her purse. The man’s mercantile grin was a thing of dingy-toothed glory and he snapped it up without any further question beyond “ ‘Ere to miss?”

Josephine glanced towards Leliana, who was staying behind to confer with her agents before following, and answered, “The Gridelin Club, if you please.”

Cullen found himself squeezed against the hansom cab door and Cassandra’s shoulder, which smelled strongly, as his own did, of burnt oil. Between his hip and hers, the bulk of the canvas pouch strapped to his belt dug into his leg painfully, reassuring him that no, he did not need to check again. Everything was in place, just as it had been only moments before and the moments before those. Yet his fingers itched with the impulse until he preoccupied them with the clasp of the watch.

They were off in a clatter of hooves on cobblestones and an attempt at 'polite' conversation on recent events from their driver. 

“Filthy elves, Howe’s going to set them to rights. Ship ‘em all away I say. Good riddance. Can’t earn a decent wage thanks to that lot.”

Cullen bit his response back while Cassandra produced a cigarette, handing it over towards him without a word. Taking it gratefully with his free hand, he waited for her to light it before bringing the paper to his lips. In the darkness of the cab, the cherry glow of the tip wavered.

Josephine looked at the both of them with incredulity. “Didn’t you get your fill of that on the train?”

He suspected Cassandra would have laughed aloud if her voice hadn’t been worn completely hoarse. Instead her small smile conveyed the dry turn of her thoughts as she took care to exhale in the confined space without blowing smoke in Josephine’s direction.

Peppery irritation prickled at the raw edges of his throat and it was almost enough to distract from the bleary churn of bottomless need stirring at the base of his skull. It had not been long, only a week since his last dose. But the magic at the train station still lingered in his sinuses, an atmospheric tingle heralding an imminent storm, and the dregs of lyrium still in his veins clamored at the smell of it.  It would be so easy, so simple to reach into his medical officer's kit for a syringe and an ampoule of brilliant blue. He was still, technically, a captain of the FEF's special medical corps and still entitled to the lyrium rations in his belt.  

He knew, better than most, what lyrium withdrawal could do to a man. Medical officers who couldn't limit themselves to their rationed allotments and burned through them before new supplies could be ferried to the front lines, he'd watched them shiver in their bunks, covered in sick and sweat, fingernails scraping their temples raw in a vain attempt to drive out the pain of the migraines that came with every memory returning back from the blue of forgetting. Those poor sods never lasted long--picked off by snipers or rashvine gas or 84 mm of Harrowmont stamped steel.

And it was one thing to know a detached list of clinical symptoms, and another to feel himself slowly drown beneath them, knowing the worst still lurked below.

He straightened, taking a deep, punishing drag of the cigarette. Well, he would face the worst of it then. Perhaps it would eventually suffocate him, drive him mad as it had to some or send him to his grave. But he would go a free man. He vowed that much the day he booked his train ticket home.

With a few more racially charged epithets and one outright endorsement for ‘a more perm’nant solution’, the cab driver delivered them onto the marble steps of Amaranthine’s finest social club.

“Thank you m’ladies, sir.”

Bending at the waist, the cabbie doffed his cap, revealing a mop of greasy dark hair. When he straightened, it was another man in his place, his eyes rolled up into his skull like pale, glistening stones.

It wasn’t real, he knew. Another memory resurfaced from the brightness into disturbing clarity. Shaking his head to clear the dregs of the past and the pain pulsing new at his temples, Cullen nodded back at the driver and turned towards the building.

Josephine was making an attempt to straighten her hat but it was beyond hope and the only result was scorched netting coming off in her gloves. Electric lights fixed to pillars of the portico cast a piercing gleam over everything and Cullen immediately regretted leaving the more forgiving dimness of the street. They were all covered head to toe in grime and worse. In the better light, he could now see the rust-colored spatter of blood drying on Cassandra’s collar.

A uniformed man hurried forward from the door. “No, no, no, we are not open to the public.” His nose wrinkled up in disdain and he attempted to shoo them back off the steps. “I shall fetch someone if you don’t leave immediately.”

Josephine straightened and from the decided jut her chin, it was suddenly easy to forget the disheveled hair half free from its pins or the ash burrowed into every crease of the rumpled navy travelling coat. Steely eyed, she reached into her purse, it having since lost many of the decorative glass beads set into the satin, and withdrew her card to hand to the attendant. Cullen saw that the thumb of her glove left a smudge, dark against the gold filigree.

Her card gave the attendant pause and he looked up from it to eye the rest of them. Cassandra favored the man with a disgusted noise and returned her silver lighter to the inner pocket of her suit jacket, once burgundy, now the color of a fresh bruise beneath the soot.  

The attendant stammered a horrified apology and ushered them inside into the vast foyer of another world. Everything had been dipped in gold; the men in tuxedos clutching tumblers of brandy, the women sauntering in voluminous skirts that tucked in at the waist then billowed out at the chest in froths of expensive lace, they all glittered in the light reflecting out through a hundred crystal prisms suspended above the grandeur of Amaranthine's social elite. Some noted their entrance with wide eyes and scandalized whispers loud enough to hear over the faint strains of the music playing in the nearby billiards room.

A rough-looking man standing beside an exotic potted palm approached them. “Lady Pentaghast, Lady Montilyet, we’ve been waiting for your arrival. The doctor is in one of the private rooms, I’ll take you to him.”

The man escorted them down a nearby hallway, constantly shifting his shoulders in the jacket in a way that made it blatantly obvious how uncomfortable he was amid the press of luxury. Cullen could empathize. Even if he had not been half burnt and bleeding from a knife wound, something about the marble foyer and the potted ferns seemed to sneer at those who did not belong. And a farm boy from Honnleath certainly did not belong.

They were led to a room, dimly lit and richly furnished.  A man was standing by the fireplace, light gleaming off the sharp jut of his ears and the sleek curve of his bare head. Drink in hand, he greeted them and said, more casually than the words deserved,  “I am pleased to see that you all still live.”

Josephine perched on the arm of a tufted leather settee. “The night is still young, Solas. What news?”

He indicated the reports scattered across the table meant for cocktails. “As our spymaster suspected, none of the elves involved in the attack on Divine Justinia’s motor car had been on any employment or housing records in Amaranthine. No typical scarring or missing appendages from factory labor despite what their clothing implied.”

Cullen spoke, “The man at the station with the knife, he seemed to be compelled. I’ve...seen something similar before.”

Intelligent eyes lit on him, and it was then that Cullen noticed that the air hummed with latent power. “I expect you have, Captain.”

Cassandra was up and pacing. When she spoke, her voice cracked, “Blood magic.”

“Why were they there at all?” Josephine asked, sinking down into the settee.

“To be killed,” Cassandra answered for her, stopping to lean against the wall and scrutinize the fire dancing all too merrily in the grate. “To be seen.”

“For what gain?”

Ice clinked against the tumbler as Solas took another drink. His movements were unhurried, almost ponderous. “I suspect it has something to do with Arl Howe’s endorsement for the forceful removal of elves from Ferelden. Before, it had no real chance for political support. Now, he will undoubtedly succeed.”

“So the Arl may be involved in this,” Josephine muttered. “Why?”

The door opened and Leliana entered the room, a rustle of grimy lavender satin. “Unfortunately, we may not discover until it is too late. But someone is funding Howe’s agenda.”

Pouring herself a drink from the crystal decanter on the sideboard, she continued on after downing it all in one gulp. “I will stay in the city and gather what I can on his business contacts. Whatever they are planning, they are sure to show a hand at the peace talks. The rest of you will depart tomorrow morning for Ostwick, as originally planned.”

Cassandra protested, “You can’t be serious Leliana.”

Cullen was inclined to agree. Whatever ties led to Ostwick, surely they did not matter in the wake of the Divine’s death.

“That can hardly be wise," he said.

A red curl fell forward and she pushed it back, smudging her forehead further with the blackened lace of her gloves. “You’re all alive. I don’t think that was a mistake.”

Leliana looked down at her other hand and he could now see that she held photographs. Standing as close as he was, he could just make out the black and white image of a smoked-out crater filled with twisted metal shapes. He realized after a beat that he was looking at the remains of a city block, collapsed storefronts silently testifying to the radius of the blast.

“You think the intent was not lethal? A mere show of power?” Solas asked.

She dropped the terrible images on top of the paperwork as if they were suddenly too heavy to hold. “A distraction. We’re closing in on the funding source. Howe’s backers may be the same people supplying the radicals.”

"The Trevelyans, you mean?"

Cullen shook his head, not quite believing what he was hearing. “Wouldn’t it be better for us to remain? The attack at the station was fatal enough for those on the platform, if you recall. What if there is another? Shouldn't public safety take precedence over getting to the bottom of pocketbooks?”

Rather than look at him, her eyes remained on the photographs. “It may be callous but the only attack that mattered has already happened. Justinia is gone. She was the last voice for peace and reform.”

“And was heavily criticized for both, if I recall,” Solas added, “the Divine had many enemies and so may we.”

“But not elves.” Josephine had leaned forward, lifting the edge of the photograph with tentative fingers. “The Most Holy advocated against the segregation laws and restrictions in immigration. Her successor is likely not to hold the same views. Especially not now.”

“This...staging...spits on everything she stood for.”

Cassandra’s voice was low and guttural, from the grief or the smoke, he could not tell. She had shrugged off her jacket and now clutched it tightly between her hands. “As much as I want to hunt down those responsible, Leliana is right. We can’t afford to be reactionary. Until we have more information on these attacks, we must remain focused on what leads we do have, and those still point to Ostwick.”

* * *

 

It was almost daylight by the time everything was settled. Leliana was forced to make last minute arrangements on another ship, a luxury liner paid handsomely and quietly to make a new stop on the way to Antiva City. Agents constantly flitted in and out of the room as the midnight hours waned, one bearing their salvaged luggage from the train. Cullen had procured a sewing needle and thread from Josephine and stitched up the shallow cut on his arm and the tear in his sleeve that accompanied it.

The club had private bedrooms for overnight guests too drunk to make their way back to their lavish homes and before departing, they all took advantage of the hot running water and available soap. Cullen was still rubbing pomade from his hands onto a nearby towel when someone rapped on the room door.

Straightening a collar that had long since given up its form, Cullen opened answered. Cassandra walked in, cleaned up and in another suit that put his own to shame. She eyed him and smiled. “Josephine will have you pinned and measured before the day is out, I guarantee you that.”

“Are you here on fashion business then?” he asked dryly.

“No. I wanted to speak with you alone before left. Tell me, how long has it been?”

He had absolutely no idea what she was talking about and said so.

“The lyrium. You’ve stopped taking it haven’t you?”

Going absolutely still, he asked, “How could you possibly know that?”

She indicated his right arm. “When you stitched your arm, you rolled up both sleeves. No fresh needle marks, but plenty of scarring. We can procure more for you if you need it.”

He shook his head. “No, it’s not that. I’ve decided that I will no longer be taking it.”

Her face betrayed little of her thoughts and he liked her all the more for it. If he was going to have to talk about this, he much preferred to do so without navigating the waters of another’s judgement. It didn’t matter if it was there, concealed, so long as he was not expected to assuage it.

“It’s a difficult choice, from what I know of the drug,” she said, “but if you’re resolved…”

“I am,” Cullen replied and he sounded more firm and more sure of himself than he had for long time.

Cassandra nodded and he was glad to see that his word on the matter was enough for her. It was a feeling he hadn’t realized he missed--being trusted. She paused, as if deciding whether or not to speak before finally saying, “I would like you to know that I know what really happened with your unit at the Battle of Lothering. I know what you did for the mages in your care and I think you are an honorable man.”

He was so stunned that he did not speak until she cleared her throat once, likely still as raw as his was, and moved to leave.

“Wait,” he called after her. “If you could, there are things I do need, for the...withdrawal symptoms. Is it possible to obtain them discreetly?”

“Of course.”

He wrote her a list with the pen and stationary laid out on the room’s roll top desk.

“You’ll have them before we leave the city,” she said.

True to her word, by the time the HMS Queen Anora left the harbor, he had been pinned and measured within every inch by Josephine’s sadist turned tailor. Apparently, news of the Divine’s death and his inclusion had resulted in nearly every wealthy family in Ostwick clamouring for their attendance at half a dozen ridiculous sounding engagements and Josephine was in a flurry trying to prepare his wardrobe.

Only after he managed an escape to his private stateroom, did he discover the array of tinctures and powders already waiting on the nightstand. Four dropperfulls of sickly sweet sodium salicylate on his tongue and he collapsed into the chair arranged by the desk where Josephine’s folders awaited.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspiration for the Gridelin Club was taken from the Gentleman's Clubs, like White's in London, that were prominent during this time period and functioned as essentially places for the social elite to gamble, drink, and socialize. Couldn't resist using sodium salicylate instead of its modified synthetic cousin acetylsalicylic acid, the active ingredient in aspirin first marketed commercially around the turn of the century. I've synthesized both in lab and the history of drug discovery and modification of natural compounds (in this case, willow bark extract) is kind of fascinating to me because I'm a ridiculous nerd.
> 
> I had intended to take this story to Ostwick by now but its taken some turns of its own. I like to stay a couple of chapters ahead of what I've posted so that I can keep checking for plot and characterization continuity, so updates will probably remain on a weekly basis. Thank you so much everyone who has read and kudos'ed and commented. You are all absolute perfection, I can't say how encouraging it is to see <3


	5. The Lady and the Thief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The cursed girl of Ostwick goes to church, disappoints mother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After I wrote this chapter, I came across a piece that almost perfectly matched what was in my head for the Invocation, so I definitely recommend a listen. It's composed by Joby Talbot, the Leon movment. I also would recommend Palestrina's Motets, both are easy finds on Youtube and gloriously ethereal.

The bells had been ringing all morning long and Adelina Trevelyan had been up the entire night. Rubbing the corner of her eye with one ink-stained glove, she sighed at the rows of sums that had begun to jitter around the page. She was fairly certain they were not supposed to do that.  
  
“Perhaps it would be best to leave the household accounts for tomorrow, miss.”

She smiled up at Bromwell, feeling very disheveled in comparison. His uniform was perfectly pressed as always; shoes shined to patent leather mirrors, cufflinks straight, collar starched into stiff folded-down triangles. It made her feel a bit guilty knowing that her mother would fire him on the spot had he looked as unkempt as she did.  But neither of them were responsible for the accidents of their births and she knew Bromwell certainly didn’t spend any time worrying over the injustice of it all. The old man was far too practical for that.

“Perhaps you are right.” She frowned and the red ink glared blearily up at her in reproach.

“Forgive me for saying, Miss Adelina, but the manor will not crumble apart in the span of a day.”

He was right, of course.  
  
She indicated a messy stack of papers. “These at least are ready to be signed by father. It's almost eleven isn't it?"

By 11, her father would be sufficiently intoxicated to sign his name to anything.

“It is exactly 11:20, miss.”

She startled. So late already? No wonder he had been gently urging her out of the study for the past hour. Her mother must already be in the foyer, ready to depart. Peering into the mirror fixed to the wall by the desk, Adelina did her best to scrub the purple shadows from beneath her bloodshot eyes.

“I’ll certainly be living up to the horror stories today,” she muttered aloud.

Bromwell made no comment, bless the man.

Truth be told, it would have amused her if it were not for the harrying her appearance would undoubtedly elicit from her mother. Lady Trevelyan placed great import in appearances even without half the town convinced one of her daughters blasphemed with demons over afternoon tea on a regular basis. Adelina attempted to tame her hair into submission, hoping to look a bit less like a blasphemer and a little more like the sort of woman who only took tea with respectful sorts. But both endeavors were proving to be hopeless, so she simply settled her hat as best she could, drawing the tuxedo netting down over her face in the hopes that it would conceal the evidence of a sleepless night.

The gasp of horror that met her arrival into the foyer was all the confirmation that her best attempts were insufficient.

“Andraste’s tears, you look positively wild."

Her mother’s fur tippet rippled with her displeasure. Adelina despised that wrap. The inky mink still possessed its original owner’s intact head and it seemed to always glower at her. It did so now, beady eyes expressing only disapproval.

“Sorry, I forgot the hour.” She delivered her apology with a set jaw and determined expression that undermined her words entirely.

No one else spoke, her sisters suddenly absorbed with the details of their elaborate mourning gowns and her father too deep in his cups to be aware of the tension reverberating through the entryway.

The mink’s four paws swung as Lady Trevelyan made a haughty turn towards the door. “Very well. You’ll have no one to blame but yourself when everyone is talking about your disastrous appearance.”

Unable to stop the arch in her brow at her mother’s definition of a disaster on the day the entire town was in mourning, Adelina averted her eyes down to her clasped hands and realized that she had forgotten to change her gloves. But it was too late to run all the way to her room, they were already out the door and on the way to the carriage, her two sisters forming a prim row after her father and mother.  Folding her hands into the black taffeta skirt, she could only follow.

“Why haven't we invited them to stay with us Mama?” her second oldest sister asked and Adelina wanted to kiss her for it, “everyone else already has.”

Her mother had spent the last ten minutes lacing as many barbs as possible into the conversation and Adelina was grateful for the change in topic. The carriage jostled around on its springs and she stabilized herself without moving her hands from beneath her skirt, determined not to incur more scrutiny.

“You know very well why. We already have expected guests.”

Cora pouted prettily. “They’re relations.”

“Very, very distant relations my dear. Almost not relations at all. We’re lucky they’ve finally forgiven us for the misunderstanding with…” Her mother’s eyes slanted towards her in silent accusation. “Well, this is a chance to heal the breach.”

Adelina remained silent, but she flushed with anger. She had been an infant during the whole affair, it wasn’t like she had been the one to hurl all those accusations the last time their ‘very very distant’ relations made an appearance in Ostwick. Her palm began to tingle beneath the heavy fold of her skirt and its telltale glow flickered faintly against the chestnut paneling of the carriage.

Before anyone noticed, she tamped the flare of anger down beneath a reservoir of calm--a reservoir nearly run dry. Sleep deprivation and a day spent near her mother were a poor combination for self control.

Her sister was still pouting but it was not producing any of the desired results. “But none of them have been in the papers.”

“I should think not, how gauche.” Her mother sniffed.

Lady Trevelyan found a great many things gauche. A second rate mezzo soprano hailing from Antiva without much of a title at all, she was quick to capitalize on the small aristocratic reputation gained from marrying a bann. Trapped in the social limbo of moderate wealth and means, she summarily dismissed everyone above and below her with that single word.

They had reached the chantry slightly later than everyone else--a clever tactic to ensure a full church to witness their entrance. Gripping the door of the carriage, she took in the lovely white belfry rising above the red tiled roof and vast patina dome. It was a magnificent building, old Tevinter architecture (rid of its more draconic elements) that had managed to survive both time and war. Nestled against the Vimmark foothills, it overlooked the town and ocean cliffs, stone finials soaring up into the sky. The low bell was still ringing out for the death of the Divine Justinia, heralding the beginning of the period of mourning that would endure until the next Divine was chosen. For days on end the cathedral would echo with the Invocation to the Maker, beseeching his care for the soul taken so quickly to bask in the glory of his light.

She was suddenly convinced her sleepless night had been entirely worth her mother’s scorn.

“Adelina, your gloves!”

Perhaps not.

“Absolutely covered in ink, you’re not fit to be seen.”

But be seen she must. Ostwick’s population was staunchly religious, fanatic almost, but it was difficult for them to consign a woman and her family to total damnation when she regularly attended church.

Her mother seemed to consider exactly what rumors would circulate if her bewitched daughter were to be conveniently absent on the day the city began to mourn the Divine’s death. Not pleased with the possibilities, she hissed for Adelina to keep her hands folded into her dress and promptly marched towards the doors of the cathedral.

They arrived during the Threnodies liturgy and her mother’s entrance was spoilt by the fact that everyone was focused on the Grand Cleric. Her family was forced to take their seats in one of the last pews facing the golden statue of Andraste towering high into the cathedral dome, her mother huffing to indicate her dissatisfaction at the poor location.

Adelina sat at the end of the pew, as far from the loathsome mink as possible without signifying acrimony.  The convocation was repeating the verse in unison and she scrambled to find the place mentally, succeeding in time to say the final two lines, “Go forth to claim the empty throne of heaven and be Gods.”

Such a hideous thing. Perhaps she should speak to the furrier herself. Threats from a bedeviled woman might be incentive enough to stop him from extending her mother any more credit. Her palm tingled and there was a whisper of something otherworldly curling against her earlobe, a song distorted and faint as if coming from underneath an ocean.    
She forgot to keep her hands beneath her skirt as the first words of the Invocation rose up through the cupola from the lips of Sister Angelica. It cut off the faint murmur in her ear, drowning it back beneath the waves. The piercing sweetness of her voice soon joined at the renewed interval with the harmonious voices of the other sisters and brothers.

“I don’t remember this melody,” her mother muttered, “when Beatrix died.”

It sounded somehow like a hundred human voices forming the chime of the low bell, the mournful third that only cried out alone on the darkest of days. It drew their rapt attention, this new lamentation weaving up through the marble arches, echoing out over the hills to join the ring of heavy brass as it dipped and swelled.

Against her skirt, her fingers weaved the rhythm in time. The tempo had been crafted for each harmony so that the shifting notes together emulated the motion of the bells and the complexity of it was like pure joy in her hands.

After the echoes of the last note faded, the cathedral fell into stunned silence before the Grand Cleric began again the Threnodies liturgy verse. After, the cathedral recited with her. Adelina joined them, her voice one of hundreds, lost in the well of communal sorrow.

 _In secret they worked_  
 _Magic upon magic_  
 _All their power and all their vanity_  
 _They turned against the Veil_    
 _Yet it would not give way_

It wasn’t until the stained glass lit up with rose gold from the setting sun that they stood to leave. Outside, they stretched out the pins and needles from limbs, waiting for the carriage while her mother fulfilled the secondary purpose of religious worship by engaging in vicious gossip.

“My dear Lady Trevelyan.” Lady Monteagle inclined her head, the magnificent plumage of her hat swaying and bobbing with the motion. “The Grand Cleric and her mystery musician have quite outdone themselves with the arrangement of the Invocation. What a beautiful composition.”

Lady Trevelyan wrinkled her nose in distaste. “I thought it far too modern. A religious prayer should not be so evocative. It’s a chantry, not an opera house.”

“I would have thought you developed a taste for the modern aesthetic given your fashion choices this morning. That tippet is remarkably unique...very avante garde,” Lady Monteagle replied, all smug smiles.

It was then that the rest of them noticed the mink was missing all of it’s legs. In their place were four bald patches, stark white against the fur. Her mother blanched but refrained from expressing her mortification until they were back in the carriage, safely away from prying ears. But once she began, it was all anyone heard of through tea and dinner. As the last of the china plates were cleared away, Adelina managed to slip away to the gardens unnoticed and spare herself the umpteenth iteration.  

* * *

 

She shifted her weight on the wall. It was the highest encircling the three terraced gardens rippling out from the top of the hilly slope. Before, when they could afford more than a handful of overworked groundskeepers, the gardens were kept in clipped precision, but now the walkways were obscured with wandering greenery. She preferred it that way, everything overgrown and untamed. Some ten feet beneath her dangling heels, the moonlight silvered the wild tangles of the herb garden.

If she had any lingering doubts over who was responsible for the mink incident earlier, they were silenced when a furry limb affixed to a black ribbon landed squarely in her lap.

She  plucked it up and laughed. “What's this? A gruesome trophy?”

“Hardly. Well, sort of, actually. It’s for luck.” Sera wrinkled her nose. “Doesn’t everyone know animal feet are lucky?”

She rubbed a finger over the fur, feeling the fragile bones beneath. “They don’t seem to be much luck to the dead animals.”

Sera considered this for a second, flouncing down beside her. “So its stupid, the luck bit. But it was a laugh.”

“I know,” Adelina said, “I could hear you snickering from the bushes outside the cathedral.”

“Did you see her face?” Sera guffawed, “I about pissed myself.”

“Good thing you were in the bushes then.” Adelina pointed out but Sera was far too delighted with herself to take any notice. Rather, she opted to replay the remainder of the scene with far more profanity than it originally contained. Her impersonations were rather good but her Antivan accent was absolutely dreadful--a cross between Orlesian and Denerim street twang. She drawled out, “Oh yes, the new fashion it is. More humane for the little buggers.”

Adelina drew her feet up into her skirt, laughing helplessly. Sera rounded on her, eyes sparkling. “Right, so you sort out that little tosser yet? ”

“Not yet.” She frowned and bit her bottom lip between her teeth. “But I did secure the maid a new position in a shop. It shouldn’t be too strenuous for a woman in the family way.”

“Right, right.” Sera dismissed. “But what are you going to do to him so he’ll keep his nasty little prick to himself?”

Adelina groaned, remembering now the promise she gave Sera in an attempt to dissuade her from castrating Bann Penrose’s only son. The man deserved it, but that only made the whole process of coming up with an alternative even more difficult. Besides, just retribution had been the furthest thing from her mind lately.

“I knew it. Showin up at four in the bloody morning with that damn music,” Sera accused.

Unlike her sisters, Adelina’s complexion favored that of her father--all pale and pink and prone to getting splotchy at the slightest provocation. And Sera’s acid tongue was more than enough to turn her scarlet.

She did her best to apologize, “I’m sorry, I was up all night making last minute alterations.”

Sera was having none of it and snapped, “Tell that to the other maids. Why’re you taking so long anyway? It’s not hard is it? I thought of a million things already.”

A million things that would get the constable involved. It was a constant struggle keeping Sera out of Ostwick’s two-room jail. The city was too small for her Red Jenny antics and despite only having a handful of men and women on the police force, all were well acquainted with Sera. As much as Adelina would miss her, she couldn’t help but wonder why Sera hadn’t moved on to Val Royeaux or Denerim--cities large enough to afford the protection of anonymity.

“Oh? A million things that don’t involve sharp objects?”

“What’s the fun in that? ‘Sides, its just smart. Cut off the problem at its source.”

Adelina made a face. “Charming visual. But no. Give me more time. I’ll think of something, I promise.”

For a moment, she feared Sera would tell her to sod off, her lips were compressed down and thin at the corners--a sure sign of imminent profanity. But instead she changed the subject.

“I’m going to hear your stupid jingle for days and days and go all batty. When that happens, you’re top on my castrating list.”

Rather than a threat, it sounded like a statement of affection. Actually, the majority of Sera’s admissions of affection were phrased within threats, so that was nothing particularly novel.

“I will think of something today.” Adelina promised. “And thank you. You know I couldn’t…”

“Get on without my help?” Sera finished for her, ripping a tendril of clematis from the wall just to be destructive. “Yeah, I know. But you need a new thing to take your mind off all that curse rubbish. Something that doesn’t involve music and the asscrack of dawn. Or does, so long as _I’m_ not the one bringing it round to Grand Cleric Sour Tits”

Fingers shredding apart the vine into little pieces of green, she considered seriously. “Maybe like in the stories yeah? But the good-looking one is dead.”

Adelina paused, confused, and then laughed despite herself. “King Cailen was married, he wasn’t about to go around breaking curses with kisses.”

“Just a peck, maybe a little squeeze if you were feeling generous. Hardly anything.”

Resisting the urge to push her closest friend off the wall and into the herb garden below, Adelina glowered, hoping it would compensate for the fierce flush warming her face.

“Have it your way. Keep writing music about being welcomed into Andraste’s glorious tits or whatever.”

“Bosom. And I didn’t write the words you know, only the music.”

Sera stood up suddenly and balanced on the edge, crushing vines underfoot. “Same thing. If I have to listen to something all week, it’s going to be something funny. Funny wont make me go batty. Still liked the demon tea party one, people still talk about it.”

Adelina smiled, leaning forward into the breeze while bracing her hands against the terra cotta. Starting the rumors had begun as a wager between the two of them and long since became a running experiment to see exactly how much people were willing to believe. Quite a lot, it turned out. She still wasn't sure how she felt about that. 

She used to worry constantly over what people said of her. It was the kind of worry that kept her up all night practicing little mannerisms like how to fold her palms inward without being too obvious about it or how to look appropriately devout while reciting the Chant of Light. Head down, placid expression, heavy gloves, palms facing away.

It mattered then, vitally, that she prove every rumor wrong.  No, she didn’t burst into green flames when she cried; of course she could touch the statue of Andraste without scorching her fingers; there were no horns under her hat; no extra toes. The part of her heart that believed it was possible to make them love her had still pulsed, delicate and fervent in her chest--a tremulous “maybe if” beating bright and vivid wings against her ribs.

She told herself that was all in the past. After all, wasn't that what their little experiment was for? To laugh at old wounds. 

“You could tell everyone that if they look at me cross-eyed, they’ll be able to see my true form?” she suggested after a beat, ignoring the fact that the scarred-over part of her heart where her maybes used to be ached every time their experiment was a success.

Sera cackled, throwing a confetti of green stems into the night. “That’s sparkling.”


	6. The Knight and The Academic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Traveling across the Waking Sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the very long delay! Should be resuming weekly updates from now on. Also, as a warning, this chapter does delve more into withdrawal. Thank you so much for reading and a huge thank you for the kudos and comments, you are all perfect <3 I've used the default name for the Warden just to minimize confusion.

He’d expected the lyrium withdrawal to continue to submerge him inch by terrible inch into the headaches, the nausea, the sweat soaking through his shirt. But instead, it dragged him down with one forceful jerk--a predator finally getting a proper grasp on its prey. There was no warning, no chance for one last gasp of air before he was pulled under.

When he closed his eyes he saw light dissolve like sugar into watery darkness.

_"Your technique is much improved."_

_It was not insincere praise, but it was certainly unqualified. He was no great connoisseur of art, especially not art that strayed from pleasant but uninspired depictions of nature. Pragmatic, his opinion was that a painting should simply replicate life in every minute detail, like a photograph in oils. Good art accomplished this and bad art did not and Cullen didn’t bother with adjusting that view until her work had gone beyond quiet still-lifes and taken on a dreamy, abstract quality._

_He found himself fascinated with the rippling surfaces and stippled peaks of dried paint, images once so clear now obscured in the interplay of choppy brush strokes. It was somehow more real than anything in their sterile white world--the difference between looking at a picture of a bird and feeling a beating wing against his hand._

_Solona tapped her brush into the glass at her side and he watched the ribbon of cadmium yellow unfurl in the water._

_"Thank you. And thank you again for the paints. They’ve helped a great deal." She paused to look up at him and smiled--a real smile, not the serene, medicated variety._

_The pink pills left patients fully alert but dissociated from all emotion except mild happiness. His instructors were very clear that it was a pleasant sensation--enjoyable in fact. "Some days, I'm half tempted to pop a few myself" one had joked, nudging Cullen with his elbow. Solona Amell had never seemed as subdued as the others, something more lingering at the corners of her expressive eyes._

_But then, seeing the real thing and not its diminutive shadow in the summer's day blue, he felt the visceral impact of her joy punch him in the stomach. She was developing a resistance to the drug--just like some of the others._

_He would have to tell Dr.Greagoir immediately._

_The paintbrush scratched against the canvas. He stood still, listening to the sound, like the skittering of claws in the dark._

_“You don’t have to tell him anything,” Solona said and the brush left rust colored smears, sounding like dead and brittle leaves rustling under the foot of an animal. He flinched. Not leaves._

_“If you felt anything for me, you wouldn’t tell him. You’d stay here, with me, just like this.”_

_Her eyes were odd, flickering with a strange intensity as she ran the brush handle against her lips, pursed in thought. It was almost seductive and Cullen could not repress the warm shiver furrowing through his spine._

_No. What he felt was impossible and inappropriate. She was a patient in his care and it didn’t matter how different she was, the fact remained. He was shaking his head, backing away but there was something solid behind him that had not been there before._

_Overhead, the electric bulb flared and then popped with a whine, dropping the room into a world of shadows. The rasp of bristles was even louder and the noise burrowed into his skull, terror gnawing on the primal part of his brain that recognized the writhing shadows for what they really were. He was already screaming when one came too close, scrabbling over his foot. He picked up the small furry body and heaved it against the barrier._

_In the darkness, the thing that looked like Solona Amell stared at him with hungry eyes._

Cullen woke in the copper bathtub.

He was clothed and he reeked of a chemist. By the time he registered the bitter film coating his mouth, he saw the physical evidence as to why. Apparently the antiemetic had not been very effective, he’d been unable to keep any of the medication down.

Stripping off his shirt and trousers with heaving, shivering motions, he turned the mother-of-pearl inlaid handles and thanked first class amenities for the torrent of water pouring out of the faucet. It was too hot, scalding almost. But pain scraped the aches from his joints. He thought it must’ve been a long time that he’d been out, his limbs were cramping and sore as if he’d spent days in the tub.

Which, when he saw the folded notes slipped beneath his door, was looking to have been the case. Three from Josephine, growing increasingly concerned over his ‘seasickness’ and a single sentence note from Cassandra, inquiring if he needed anything more from the ship’s physician. From them, he gathered that he had not left his cabin for at least two days. Judging from the decidedly pink cast of the light from the port hole window, it was perhaps closer to three--over half the journey.

The cabin was stifling and stale and he suddenly needed to breath air that wasn’t saturated with the acid tang of sweat, bile, and fear. Dressing in clean, but rather rumpled clothes, he moved to the silver tray by his bedside and noticed for the first time that his medical officer’s kit was out, flap folded back. A rubber canister was open, revealing the gleaming tops of the syringes. One was missing.

Cullen checked the other compartment with trembling fingers but the blue ampoules were still intact. Sunset spilled through the window and the lyrium caught the sunlight like an ocean wave, turning blood red. His resolve, already strained beyond measure, flagged.

But before it could fail entirely, a golden disc in the tangle of sheets on the floor caught his eye, distracting him from the need iclawing in his veins. Still holding the lyrium vial, he bent down to pick it up. It was the pocket watch, familiar filigree reassuring against his fingertips as the chain clinked against his waistcoat buttons. Cullen rubbed his thumb over it for a long moment before tucking it into his pocket. He then placed the lyrium back in the pouch and folded the rubber canister lid back down.

* * *

 

The promenade deck was mostly empty. Judging from the distant clatter of silverware and murmur of voices drifting from the nearby dining salon, Cullen assumed this was due to the fact that most of the other passengers were in the middle of supper. But there was a lone figure leaning against the brass and wood railings, outlined black against the rosy sky. Without turning, the man addressed him.

“Feeling better Captain?”

“Not particularly, but it is an improvement,” Cullen admitted, joining the doctor at the railing.

Solas nodded and they fell into silence underscored by the faint sound of the quartet performing inside. After a moment, Cullen finally decided to address the question lingering in the back of his mind since they had been introduced. It seemed impossible to him that a mage would seek out a career in medical work.

“May I ask what branch of medicine you practice?”

Solas smiled thinly. “I’m not that sort of doctor. I hold a doctorate degree, not a medical license. But not many elves have the distinction of either.”

“That’s not what I meant to imply.” Cullen put in. “It was your magical ability that provoked the question.”

“Ah, yes. Forgive the assumption.” He was holding a walking stick and it practically hummed with focused energy. At the top was the carving of some sort set in bronze, but Cullen could not quite make it out the way Solas was gripping the cane. It was a bit taller than the fashionable equivalents Cullen had seen other men carry, but otherwise, there was nothing especially distinctive about it.

“I assume your area of study is pertinent to our business in Ostwick,” Cullen ventured, realizing quickly that Solas was not one to volunteer personal information freely.

“That remains to be seen. I had published a paper on a historical artifact detailing the existence of a spirit world, termed the Fade by the Chant of Light, and its denizens. Leliana contacted me soon after.”

“You study magic?” Cullen asked.

“Technically, I study historical folklore dealing with magic due to the fact that the academic world continues to perpetuate the deception that magic and those who practice are the mere products of mental disease,” Solas answered. “But yes. An artifact of a similar description is detailed in the many tellings of the Trevelyan woman’s curse. In fact, it is one of the few details that remains constant.”

He shifted the cane in his hand; two pointed ears and a snout peaked out from beneath his fingertips. A wolf’s head. The choice struck Cullen as odd. It was well crafted and finely detailed but a far cry from typical.

“And what branch of medicine do you practice Captain?”

Cullen’s hands tightened around the polished maple railing. “None. I am no longer interested in the medical field.”

Solas turned towards him and Cullen was struck with the disconcerting feeling that the man’s eyes saw a great deal too much. “What interested you in the first place?”

He answered without thought, “I wanted to help others.”

It was not the first time someone had asked, and not the first time he’d given the answer, but it was certainly the first time it had been met with a chuckle. The laughter was not mocking, but Cullen found himself wishing it was. He was unsure what to make of the genuine amusement and the fact that it was the first sign of mirth from the doctor left him bewildered.

“May I ask then, why medicine? Why not a cobbler? Or a baker? Most professions help people, Captain. And a well-mended shoe is more gratefully received than most medical examinations.”

For a moment, Cullen had no reply. He had been thirteen by the time he’d been accepted to the lyceum for medical training, but his heart was set long before then, so long ago that he could not recall a time in his childhood when it wasn’t. There was no single moment of epiphany that had fixed in his mind, just a vague impression of crisp white coats over expensive suits and an unmistakable air of competence. And not the sort of competence he’d seen before, the kind that coaxed plows out of muddy ground or haggled down the price of seed at market--something else, something that seemed like more.

“I suppose I wanted to help those who were helpless,” he finally answered, sifting through his earliest memories and finding nothing beyond images long tarnished.

Amusement gone, Solas examined him seriously. “So you didn’t want to help others, you wanted to save them.”

Cullen found himself irritated, but he was at a loss as to if he was irritated with himself or the other man. “How are the two different?’

“Those who cannot help themselves must be saved. They are entirely dependent on aid and without it they are lost...without a savior they are doomed and that is what you truly wished to be.”

The word ‘savior’ brought up stained glass images of Andraste and that did not sit well with him.

“It’s a noble ideal,” Solas continued on, clarifying, “Not a holy one...well, not in the way you are perhaps thinking of. More like the modern equivalent of knighthood.”

Knighthood. The idea resonated in his memory and with it, he heard the ring of truth reverberating down to the very core of his being.  Cullen looked away and watched the crash of seawater against the hull of the ship, very far beneath him. A foamy spray kicked up and he could smell the brine of it as if it had splashed against his face.

“That’s ridiculous,” he finally said, looking back up.

“Is it?” Solas asked, face contemplative as he watched the disc of sunlight finally dip completely beneath the waterline. “Rescuing the helpless. What quest could be more noble?”

A wry twist of smile appeared and it seemed to Cullen that perhaps Solas was no longer thinking only of his professional idealism.

“Something amuses you?” he asked dryly.

“A great many things, Captain.”   
  
Well, if the man wanted to be evasive, Cullen was in no position to stand in his way. But there was something too defensive in his words and they sounded sharp-edged as they parried a line of questioning that cut too deeply.

Seeing that he had already given himself away, Solas offered up, “I was just musing on how it is that those who need to be saved never seem to want to be. The whole business is an exercise in folly.”

“Only if the real purpose is praise.”

“Yes,” Solas answered. “That is true. But without the praise of those who tell our histories, our saviors are fated to become our villains.”


	7. The Hunter and the Guests

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Trevelyans' distant relations arrive in Ostwick

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for the kudos and comments! You are all amazing <3

“Freezing my ditties off up here.”

Adelina glanced up from the pile of sheet music, carefully weighed down with her heeled shoe to prevent papers from scattering with the slightest gust. The chantry’s bell chamber turned workshop was highly prone to gusts. It was little more than a wooden platform at the top of the tower, encircled by eight shuttered archways nearly twice as tall as a person. Even closed, the wooden slats did little to keep breezes out and Sera had flung open three so that she could walk out onto the peaked roof of the church and survey the town. She liked to squish the distant figures bustling in the square between her thumb and index finger--particularly those she disliked.

“Got you now you bleedin’ ninny.” Sera cackled, forgetting her frozen breasts in a fit of malicious glee.

“I’m not giving you my shawl, you know its getting colder and you still never come prepared,” Adelina informed her before going back to work.

“Be stingy if you like.”

That was a tone that bode ill. It said that Sera was already halfway through devising a prank. Probably something with jam. Shooting a panicked look at the cello propped up against the wall--she had only just gotten it clean after the last time--Adelina sighed and heaved herself up. Her arm jostled the chipped little teapot at her side and it threatened to spill lukewarm earl grey all over the pages still wet with ink. Luckily she caught it in time and moved it further away for good measure.

“Bring me one of them, you know, sone...sconce...fancy biscuits while you’re at it,” Sera added.

Adelina grabbed a lemon scone from the plate and then paused. “Wait...to eat or to throw?”

Silence was her answer and she set the pastry back down with a sigh and climbed out onto the stone ledge jutting from the open arch. The stonework was chilly against her bare feet and her toes were already slightly numb from the wind nipping up her skirt but the ledge was half the width of her foot and heels made the process tricky.   
  
It was a lucky thing that heights did not frighten her, otherwise the prank Sera used years ago to lure her out onto the roof for the first time would have resulted in several ruined instruments instead of several slightly water damaged instruments (it had been raining, which made the decision to be insane more rapid than it normally would have been). But it was a long time now that pranks were unnecessary, although that did not discourage Sera. The view of Ostwick at dawn while the bells rang bronze reverberations through the chantry stone was enough incentive to endure cold toes.

It was a good roof for climbing, the tiles didn’t slip and the masonry wasn’t prone to crumbling treacherously beneath feet. A wide, flat strip bisected the sharp gabled roof only a foot below the ledge. She hopped down with practice more than care and walked along to where Sera perched--at the very end where plaster gave way to sky.

“You’re golden.” Sera took the shawl from her and cocooned herself up against the wind with the plaid weave. It wasn’t pretty or fashionable but it was warm and as much as Adelina loved her makeshift workshop for the relative solitude it afforded; cold, clumsy fingers were a significant drawback.

“How about you leave off that stupid symphony or  whatever it is you’re writing and let me take a crack at them?”

Adelina snorted, making her way back across the roof to the belfry. “Not for all the jam in Ostwick.” she called over her shoulder.

The three bells were housed in a wooden lattice nestled up in the spire of the belfry, almost twenty feet above the wooden floor of the bell chamber. A complex pulley system allowed them to be lowered for monthly cleanings but now they remained suspended above her, massive clappers muffled against the bronze rims. Sera was mad to ring them, she had gotten it into her head that it would be interesting to do so by striking the cavernous undersides with a mallet. No amount of dissuading could convince her that it would not be “a laugh” to go deaf by doing so.

“I bet they’re easier to steal than horses. Shame they can barely handle the roads.”

Pausing, she turned around to see what Sera could be possibly be talking about. Not the bells certainly...hopefully. And then she saw them--tiny metal forms gleamed in the distance, kicking up dust from the road. Motorcars, she realized.

“Looks like they’re heading for your place.”

They were indeed.

“Shit,” Adelina cursed.

* * *

 

“My darling, I was beside myself with worry.” Her mother was glaring daggers over the floral motif of her porcelain cup. The china rattled loudly when she set her teacup and saucer down to stand and formally introduce her wayward daughter to the five strangers in the sitting room.

Well, not strangers--relatives, distant ones. Although Adelina was not sure which was worse under the circumstances.

Only one extended his hand for her to take and as she tipped her head down, she caught a flash of an unruly smile and dark eyes filled with amusement. The man winked at her discreetly before bowing his head down over their hands in return. When he released her glove, the smile was gone but his amusement remained.

He turned to her mother. “Lady Trevelyan, as pleased as I am to finally see your daughter again, I find I am entirely distracted by your excellent tea service. Truly, I’ve not seen its equal in Minrathous.”

Errant daughter forgotten, she turned to their guest and favored him with the full brunt of her delight. “My dear Dorian, you are too kind but I’m sure nothing can compare to the wonders of the mysterious Imperium.”

Slipping down onto the end of the settee, jostling her sister Flora in the process, Adelina surreptitiously examined the other guests. Four gentlemen in all, and two ladies. One man bore a strong resemblance to Dorian--his father perhaps, or a much older brother. The women were turned out in a strange fashion that, while unfamiliar, still provoked envious glances from her sisters. None, except Dorian, seemed at all pleased to be there.

Adelina thought he must be the only single man in the group by the predatory glint in her mother’s eye. Trevelyans had a fondness for hunting bordering on obsession and her mother put them all to shame. The woman possessed the keen senses of a bloodhound when it came to sniffing out wealthy men of status and she did not need a rifle to capture her unwitting prey. Unfortunately, her talents were by and large wasted in Ostwick, where eligible bachelors were currently in short supply.

“Tell me, do you care for music?” she asked Dorian.

Before he could have the opportunity to answer, she nodded towards Flora. “My daughter Floralina sings beautifully.”

Dorian inclined his head and smiled, perfect parts boyish charm and roguish appeal. It left Adelina with the distinct impression that only someone well versed in the arts of scheming matrons could produce a smile so calculated to charm one. In fact, it seemed like he was playing her mother more than she was playing him. No unwitting prey, this one.

 “I think I can speak for my entire party when I say we would be delighted to witness such musical talent.”

One of the women did not bother to hide her grimace as she rubbed a finger along the rim of her untouched teacup and then examined the intricate lace for grime. It was a motion that reminded Adelina of their housekeeper--a woman hellbent on eradicating all manner of dirt. Poor Mrs. Rutger would be horrified to see distrust in her skills from a guest.

Flora flushed prettily and turned to her. “Lena, would you play?”

In truth, she was not a very talented pianist. While technically proficient, she lacked real skill with musical instruments--and she had tried her hand at more than a few. There was always a missing element in her playing, a gap between what she wanted to hear and what her fingers could produce. But she was, if anything, an accurate player, and that was all that mattered when it came to an accompanist.

The rest of her sisters had inherited their mother’s voice and never bothered to develop beyond basic proficiency on the piano. So it was alarming when their mother interjected again, “No, I think Coralina would love to accompany you instead.”

Adelina was never partial to her mother’s naming scheme but it was all the more ridiculous when she insisted on using everyone’s full names when they were all together.  

Meanwhile, Cora looked mortified. “I would much rather sing. Can’t Lena play?”

“No, I think Adelina looks rather peaked. Let your dear sister catch her breath.”

It was a tone that brooked no argument, not that they could protest any longer under the steely scrutiny of their guests. Adelina wondered if they were all distant cousins of her father, or only just a few of them. She hoped for the later, especially regarding the woman with the teacup.

Cora and Flora primly set their cups into delicate saucers and made their way over to the piano with all the enthusiasm of men marching towards the executioner. They rifled through the sheet music, attempted to prolong the inevitable while simultaneously searching out the simplest piece to perform. In a bid to divert attention from her increasingly flustered sisters, Adelina turned towards Dorian, who had moved to stand close to her.

“Do you play yourself?” she asked.

He smiled, looking very handsome while he did so. “I thank you for your consideration in asking, but my abilities as a musician flourish best without public display. Which is to say that I am dreadful.”

“I’m sure you are being too modest,” her mother interjected.

“Not at all Lady Trevelyan, I could refer you to several frustrated instructors if you doubt my sincerity.”

Trapped into a corner with no flattering alternative, the woman merely smiled and deferred her attention to the guest seated closest to her. It was not received warmly.

“You’ve grown quite a bit since we last met,” Dorian addressed Adelina, dropping his voice so that his words would not be heard by anyone beyond them. A part of her instructed that such a thing should leave her breathless and thrilling. Handsome men addressing her in (relative) privacy was not something that occurred on a regular basis. But despite the trappings of romance, his voice did not seem to hold any actual romantic intentions. All the better, really.

“Babies often do. It would be very strange if I had not.,” she replied, conspiratorially matching his volume.

He seemed delighted. “Ah yes, but you were a strange baby, from what I can recall.”

Against her skirt, her left hand burned but she was still smiling. “Yes, from what I hear, I was frightfully red.”

He laughed too loudly and drew the eyes of the entire room. By the piano, her sisters stopped shuffling through papers, terrified expressions as if he had caught them out in their much prolonged stalling.

Smothering her laugh, Adelina settled for a smirk in his direction and stood. “I am feeling much recovered, perhaps a duet is in order.”

Before her mother could insist that she still looked dreadfully flush, Dorian voiced his enthusiasm for the idea and then there was nothing the Lady Trevelyan could say. It was a shame it had taken so long to stumble upon her mother’s weakness. Perhaps the next few weeks would not be as terrible as she expected.

 


	8. The Interrogator and the Cleric

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally in Ostwick, Cassandra does what she does best: scare confessions out of people. Part 1 of a very long chapter that I thought should be split up. Part 2 will be posted tomorrow after some minor editing.

“You’ve already lost,” Cassandra informed her over the edge of her book and Josephine scrutinized the board for a moment before asking, “How do you know?’

Cullen smiled, perhaps too smugly. Ruthless matches with Mia had destroyed his ability to win without arrogance. “I’m afraid she is right.”

Sinking back into the chair, Josephine heaved a sigh. “This is why I prefer cards. This game…” she broke off to wave a hand over the board in disgust, “is much too impersonal. Real strategy isn’t about how many moves you can keep in your head.”

Perhaps he should have let her win, he thought. Cassandra completely refused to play, saying she lacked the patience for it, and Solas rarely left his cabin during the day when the decks and parlors were full with people. Given Josephine’s expression, he was certain he’d managed to alienate his one opponent away from the game. The loss was his entirely, he was terrible at cards.

“You were on your sixth move.” Cassandra pointed out, flipping a page.

“No matter.” Spirits recovered from her defeat, she leaned forward on her elbows and templed her fingers together over the table. “We’re due in Ostwick soon. There is still much to discuss.”

They were in the ship’s parlor, tucked away from the early morning socialites by a marble pillar and a potted fern. The room was massive, the ceiling ended two decks above and was frescoed with plump cherubs dancing over ocean waves. If it weren’t for the ever perceptible pitch and roll of the hardwood beneath his feet, it would have been difficult to believe his mind when it reminded him that they were still on a ship, marble staircase notwithstanding. Why in Andraste's name did a ship need a marble staircase was beyond him.

Cassandra’s eyebrow arched. “You’re just trying to change the subject.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, I simply wanted to review the itinerary.”

“Which will be revised as soon as we get any real information. We have no idea what awaits us in Ostwick.”

“We have some idea,” Cullen said, having cleared the table of the game board and its ivory pieces.

“Yes,”  Cassandra admitted, “some. But much can change. I’d rather wait to make decisions  until after I conduct my interviews.”

"Interrogations is the more accurate term," Josephine corrected, cutting her eyes across the table at Cassandra before turning to Cullen, "please try to keep her from stabbing anyone's personal belongings."

"That hardly ever happens," Cassandra said.

The ship horn bellowed out, rumbling through the clatter of teacups.

The three of them pressed against the gleaming brass rails, watching the approach of the shoreline with the rest of the crowd on the deck. Ostwick tumbled down the slopes of the forested foothills right up to the rocky shore. Red tiled roofs and plaster walls ,turned gold in the early morning sun, clustered along the water’s edge, growing larger and larger further up into the hills, where manors perched prettily amid the greenery. Overlooking it all stood a grand cathedral with a copper dome patinated from the salt air. The ship was still far away and the entire scene was tiny and peaceful, looking like a cookie village he’d once seen in the shop window of a patisserie in Val Royeaux. He half expected someone to sprinkle sugar over the rooftops.

“How picturesque,” Josephine said.

Cassandra hmphed.

* * *

 

Ostwick was all hills and the roads were narrow and rutted, crowded with shopfronts just opening for morning business. Their car was having a hard time of it, every pothole sending it into a violent jolt. Twice, the engine chugged and whined, threatening to stall on one of the steeper ascents.  Cassandra looked about ready to put the vehicle out of its misery herself, if the roads did not beat her to it.

He was not far behind her. Every lurch sent a finger of pain through his temples, each clamping down harder than the last. It was insistent, an impatient hand growing tighter and tighter the longer he tried to ignore it. Cullen withdrew a vial from his vest pocket and emptied half the contents into his mouth, having done it now enough times not to gag anymore at the taste.

Cassandra watched him evenly. “Do you want to return to the hotel?”

“I do not wish to be coddled,” he snapped peevishly and felt foolish halfway through for directing his frustration at her. He pinched the bridge of his nose, a tactile distraction from the rattling of his bones as the car bumbled over poor road.

“My apologies,” he said, “but no. I would like to be useful if I can.”

Cassandra simply nodded and then winced in irritation as the tailpipe backfire rang out like a shot.

Morning sunlight flickered through the birch boughs overhanging the road, a bright morse code stippled onto his coat. Cullen watched it dance over the tweed amid the shadows left by leaves swaying overhead. When he looked up, the bell tower was emerging from a thicket of chestnut trees, followed by a sloping rooftop buttressed by elaborate masonry curling around enormous panes of translucent glass that caught the light and cast it back in new colors.

The scene shifted, blurred, and he saw the shelled-out corpse of a building scorched black from high explosives. Outlines were set into what was left of the walls, some barely knee-high, dark shadow forms pressed against mortar. He knew with a terrible certainty what had left them. Skeletal, pock-marked stone clawed through the dust laden air and amid the ruins of human and stone alike, was the chantry’s statue of Andraste, untouched.

“Bastards,” Lt. Hawke muttered beside him.

He closed his eyes for a long time and when he opened them again, Lothering’s chantry and Carver Hawke receded away into shadow and memory where they belonged. A second longer and he realized the car had stopped.

The nave was almost empty save a scattering of early-rising parishioners in the wooden pews. They were reciting the Chant of Light, but the words were swallowed up into the vaulted ceilings, leaving only faint imprints of sound in the overwhelming quiet.

His footsteps echoed on the stone, and they faded just as quickly. The silence reminded him of home, of a dock and a lake and a village chantry much less grand. It was the silence of first snowfall, a world muffled in white.

A line of sisters and brothers appeared from the periphery in of the chancel to arrange themselves in the quire encircling the gilded statue of Andraste.

“That is her,” Cassandra whispered, indicating one of the sisters at the front of the choir, a tawny woman with angular features and upturned eyes. “We will have to wait for them to finish.”

They took a seat in the last pew just as the choir began to sing.

Somewhere in the trench-scarred hillsides of Lothering, he had lost his faith. He wasn’t sure if it was the last remnants of Lothering’s faithful seared onto the chantry’s crumbling walls, or some other grisly scene that silently cut the last fraying threads holding it in place. He didn’t even realize it was missing until he had opened up his psalter, always kept in the breast pocket of his uniform, and felt the ragged hole where peace and acceptance used to be. For months, he still recited the Chant of Light from memory, from his psalter, substituting routine where belief used to be. He hoped more than believed it would suffice.

Music swelled up to the clerestory, transforming in the jeweled sunlight piercing through glass into one high, pure note held in the air. The dome captured it and amplified it until it rang out like struck crystal, resonating through stone and wood and bone until he felt his heart thrum with it. It felt like coming home again after a long absence--scraped knees, wind-tugged hair and Branson calling out to the rest of them to wait as he fell behind like always. Except, it was somehow more personal. Not like returning to a place in time but a person--the person he had been when his future was bright and shiny around the edges; a silver coin in his palm, a currency with limitless value.

But too soon it was over, the last voice dimming back into revered silence, taking with it the brief flicker of someone more substantial and leaving behind the man filled with nothing but threadbare hope and hollow motions.

Cassandra stood as the choir began emptying from the room and Cullen followed, the stiffness in his knees giving some indication that more time had passed than he thought.

“Do you think she will be willing to talk to you?” he asked her under his breath.

“She will if she cares for her sister.”

Cullen frowned. “You mean to threaten her?’

His question earned him a searing look of derision and a haughty, clipped tone. “That is hardly necessary. People either wish to be helpful or wish to appear helpful to avoid scrutiny. The best way to protect her sister from our suspicion is to cooperate.”

They intercepted the sister just as she passed by one of the slender stone pillars arching over the door leading from the apse.

“Excuse me, Sister Rosalina, might I have a moment of your time?”

The woman paused and as she turned towards them, Cassandra took the opportunity to slide a thumb under her lapel, flashing the silver of the all-seeing eye. The effect was near instantaneous on the other affirmed, who immediately averted their eyes and shuffled away from the woman among them who had been singled out. Finding herself abandoned, she fixed Cassandra with an imperious jut of her chin. “What is this regarding, Seeker?”

“Certain local events that took place almost twenty five years ago involving your family.”  

Wary trepidation fell away as she straightened, shoulders tense, a guarded expression shuttering away whatever flash of emotion preceded it, “I will do my best to help, but I was only twelve at the time. My knowledge is limited.”

Cassandra merely inclined her head, steely and scrutinizing. “Is there a place we can discuss this in private?”

Green eyes flickered over him for a moment as if calculating what role he could possibly have here. Finally, she nodded. “Yes, perhaps the archives. Follow me.”

She led them through corridors of the same white stone of the cathedral until they reached a cramped room turned labyrinth by the towering bookshelves stacked full with manuscripts and the cracked leather spines of aged tomes. At the corner was a large table, placed before a window so that sunlight spilled across yellow parchment. Sister Rosalina took a seat with her back to the window and gestured for them to sit in the chairs directly across.

“You are a cleric, is that correct?” Cassandra fingered the frail edge of a scroll with mute interest.

“Yes, that is right,” Sister Rosalina answered, sounding warmer and less guarded. “I worked for some time with Elder Gertrude, she was a prolific mind in the study of ancient religious texts.”  
  
Cassandra nodded and added, “Your father’s aunt.”

“Yes...although, I had several other relations in the church as well. It was often said that the best place to find a Trevelyan was within these walls. Our family has always been very devout.”

Not likely said anymore, Cullen thought. Sister Rosalina was the sole Trevelyan left in Ostwick’s chantry. He studied her face discretely, wondering if it would hold any acknowledgement of the distance that had grown between her family and the local religious leadership. He found no sign, leaving him wondering if this assertion and the serene smile that accompanied it were calculated to impress just how very devout the entire family was.

Cassandra was sterner than usual, bristling with authoritative command as she left off with the parchment and straightened in her chair. “I am Cassandra Pentaghast and this is Cullen Rutherford, formerly of the Ferelden Expeditionary Force. We are here on behalf of the late Divine Justinia, investigating a connection between your youngest sister, Adelina Trevelyan, and a recent surge in radicalist activities.”

Tawny skin paled against the cream and red of her habit. “Radicalists? Adelina would never--” Catlike, her eyes narrowed at them as fear gave way to anger. “If you’ve come to investigate all those ridiculous rumors, I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time.”

“That is for us to decide,” Cassandra replied. “Could you please recount, to the best of your knowledge, the events of your youngest sister’s naming celebration?”

The anger vanished back behind the careful expression shielding her features. She suddenly looked much older, the severe cut of her cheekbones and the set of her mouth more at home on a face twice her age, “I was twelve at the time so I was not allowed to attend. I had no idea anything unusual happened until the next morning, but at the time, my parents were more concerned with the fact that our house guests had left in the middle of the night after they were blamed for the whole business.”

“House guests?” Cullen ventured. There hadn’t been any mention of that in the rumors Leliana’s agents had gathered. Of course, those had all skewed into the wildly unbelievable. House guests were mundane compared to elven sorceresses and whatever other nonsense people could conjure up in their minds.

“Yes, some distant relatives of my father’s from Tevinter. I didn’t know the details, but they were discussing some sort of joint business venture. My father was furious over it falling through after.”

Cassandra leaned forward. “You said they had been blamed?”

The seeker’s focused attention seemed to discomfit her. Perhaps because of the two of them, Cassandra was the only one with any real authority and she wore it like one of her well-tailored suits.

Sister Rosalina hesitated before answering cautiously, “Yes. The teryn’s first wife was explicit with her opinion regarding the...unconventional customs in Tevinter. She thought the whole thing was a tasteless prank and accused them as charlatans peddling parlor tricks and explosive powders.”

He nodded. The opinion was hardly uncommon outside of the Imperium.

“What sort of business venture?” he asked, noting the lines furrowing at the corners of her mouth.

As intended, the new line of questioning left her more relaxed. “I’m afraid I wasn’t privy to most of their dealings, but I believe it was something involving a rail line.”

“Did you parents speak of the old woman?” Cassandra asked, switching back to dangerous territory so rapidly that, for a moment, the other woman did not think to resume her careful guard.

“Only after…”

Tension coiled through the room, and she was stiff-backed, looking momentarily like someone who had accidentally stepped off a cliff edge

Cassandra would not let her backpedal, pursuing the word ruthlessly. “After?”

Gone was the serene face of the devout sister, the imperious tilt of her chin. She recoiled away and stared down at the table sullenly, refusing to speak.

“After the first death?” Cassandra demanded, “the maid?”

Rather than be intimidated, the woman fixed a cold stare on them and said, “I think you should leave.”

But Cassandra was tenacious, she stood up, her chair screeching over the floor as she leaned over the cleric’s downcast head. “Henrietta Toubes, who somehow severed her spine on your family’s estate.”

Green eyes flashed up. “No one knew what happened. It could have been a wild animal.”

Her words were well-worn and trite, a phrase she did not believe but repeated often enough that she did not have to think about it anymore. It was the first thing that sounded like a lie and by the triumphant gleam in Cassandra’s eye, he knew she recognized it too.

“How was it that a child escaped this attack unscathed? Why was the body found so far away from the house?”

Sister Rosalina was no woman of weak will, but he was certain that Cassandra’s brutal barrage of questioning was calculated to expose another weakness entirely. Temper flaring in response, she stood and shot back, “She was found by the creek where she had attempted to drown an infant merely for--I do not know what stopped her, nor, Maker forgive me, do I find myself caring overmuch that malignant superstition was prevented. Now, you will excuse me.”

She swept out of the room and Cassandra made no move to stop her.

“That went well,” she said, looking pleased enough to indulge in the barest of smirks after the sound of footsteps faded completely, “better than I expected.”

She turned to him. “You have a knack for putting people at ease, like Leliana. I do not have that talent.”

“Will you attempt to speak to her again?” Cullen asked. Privately he thought that anyone would put a person at ease compared to Cassandra when it came to interviews. Josephine’s description was more accurate than he expected.

“Not me, but you perhaps. Leliana always had luck with seeking them out later and apologizing for my hostility. It made her seem like a sympathetic ear. You could do the same.”

Cassandra left him to do just that, eager to drive back to the telegraph office and communicate with Leliana. She would send a carriage back for him--no more cars in Ostwick, they had learned their lesson.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay! The last three weeks of classes have been...hectic, to say the least. As I mentioned before, this chapter ended up very very long so I split it up and will be posting the next part tomorrow or Sun. Ispiration for Ostwick has been drawn from Cesky Krumlov (but hillier) and Brasov which seriously looks like a picture book. Inspiration for the HMS Queen Anora was taken from the HMS Queen Mary where my mother used to work (in the giftshop).
> 
> Thank you for the comments and kudos, you're all so wonderful!


	9. The Man Who is Lost

Cullen found himself all too quickly turned around in the corridors. Wherever he was, it was far from the living quarters of the affirmed--there was no one else around and no sounds penetrated through the thick stone arcades.

He came to a stop at the end of a large, square room with several thick cords hanging from the center of the ceiling. Drawing closer, he found that the there was no ceiling where he expected one; the cords extended far up into the tower. A wooden staircase was set into the walls, circling high above and terminating into a flat wooden ceiling in which a large square had been cut so that the ropes could descend through to the bottom.

Well at least he had managed to find the bell tower. Cullen groaned, searching the room for an exit other than the one he’d just come through. Nothing. He cursed whatever architect had devised a maze in lieu of a church and made to turn around when there was a faint sound.

It was music, he realized. And it seemed to be coming from the ceiling.

“Lost are you?”

Cullen turned to find a short elf with choppy hair and a snub nose smiling up at him with a look that was the furthest thing from reassuring. She inspected him overtly from head to toe and then cackled gleefully.

“Yes…” he wondered what she found so amusing and then thought it was better not to ask. He just needed directions. “Could you--”

“This place is mad innit?” she interrupted him, “like a dungeon. But for holy people.”

That seemed to amuse her greatly and she laughed.

“I suppose…” he conceded reluctantly, brow furrowed, “look, do you--”

“If this was a dungeon, I suppose that’d make Revered Mother Sourtits the....ah, word right on the tip of my tongue. Hate that. Like an itch.”

He was fairly certain by this point that this woman was beyond all sense. Perhaps she had once been lost too and this was his own fate--to wander the corridors raving to strangers.

“Gaoler!” She stopped scrunching up her nose with the imagined word itch and he spoke before she could interrupt with more nonsense.

“I’m looking for Sister Rosalina. Do you know where I might find her?”

“Rosalina huh?” The look she shot him was inscrutable, but he’d already given up on trying to understand the quicksilver expressions. “Lucky you, she’s up in the bell tower.”

A finger pointed up for good measure.

He frowned and his eyebrows drew together. “Why would she...are you certain?”

“Why would I lie about something stupid like that?” she demanded, angry now, “you just met me, you don’t know spit. I say she’s in the tower, she’s in the tower.”

If he didn’t believe her before, he certainly didn’t believe her now. But it was obvious that she would be absolutely no help at best and a continued nuisance at worst, which made the bell tower an appealing option. He glanced up at the square in the ceiling where sunlight poured through to leave a perfectly angled halo around the cables. It was very far up, she would probably lose interest and go away before he made it halfway.

“Thank you for your valuable assistance.”

Despite the flat delivery of his gratitude, she was grinning. “Right, best hurry. Lots of stairs.”

Lots of stairs indeed. Wooden steps groaned beneath his feet but the railing was sturdy in his hand, if incredibly dusty. As he climbed, the tinkling melody drifted down from the ceiling, delicate and lovely in little plinks, a tower turned music box.

He was more than halfway up and there was no more sign of the strange elf below but something propelled him on. Not the thought that the cleric would actually be up there, he was quite certain that was a complete fabrication. Curiosity perhaps. Or something of what he’d experienced in the cathedral--music bright in the air, curling around his ear like a gentle whisper.

A breeze whipped down from the opening to the bell chamber above and as he reached the final ascent, it whistled past him, tugging at his shirt collar. The music was louder now, but bereft of the amplifying echoes that had lent it such a strange, otherworldly quality. He followed it up into the bell chamber and immediately it cut off mid-note as he met a pair of startled green eyes.

Not Sister Rosalina, or any member of the clergy given the fine lace blouse and sensible linen skirt radiating out over the floor around her. Her hair was piled up in a rough approximation of fashionable, but thick auburn masses had fallen out of the pins to curl against her throat. She looked tousled and slightly dazed as if waking from a dream and it felt strangely too intimate, like he had walked in on her completely exposed. Maker take him, he was staring. Staring and fumbling out an apology and rubbing the back of his neck wishing he had never listened to that blasted elf in the first place.

He shifted his weight awkwardly, not sure if he should step fully up onto the landing or stay with one foot rooted on the last stair. In his indecision, he lurched forward clumsily, his foot making contact with--a shoe? A lady’s heeled boot, now toppled over on the floor. He stared down at it, at the small leather buttons running up the side, with utter bafflement.

The woman however, looked horrified, springing up and reaching forward with a cry. Cullen realized then that he was stepping on a stack of papers like a complete oaf. He drew away quickly, hoping no damage had been done when almost immediately a terrible gust blew through the chamber from the open shutter.

In a burst of white, the papers flew everywhere.

One plastered itself against his face and pulling it away, Cullen saw the regularly spaced staves, penned in with musical notes.

At the center of the room, caught amidst the paper flurries, the woman was attempting to gather everything back up again. She clutched several crumpled sheets in her gloved hands and immediately Cullen moved to help, realizing the full impact of what he had inadvertently done.

Music sheets drifted down lazily above them, fluttering on every new breeze, making slow descents back to the wooden floor--which made it relatively easy to grab them back up. They were making short work of it until the wind pushed open again the shutter she had hastily closed. It clattered against the stone and cast the remaining music out into the sky like confetti.

“Hold these please.”

Shoving her stack of paper towards him, she climbed up onto the ledge of the archway--bare feet visible as the wind kicked up her skirt, sending it twining around her pale ankles.

“You don’t mean to--” He started forward as she clasped the joint of stone. Before he could say more, she had dropped down.

Was everyone absolutely mad in this place? He rushed over and peered down to see her blithely making her way along a flat strip of roof, snatching up papers clinging to the tiles. Relief clamped down on the hard jolt of his heart against his ribs--he had no desire to watch a woman plummet to her death. He quickly saw there was no cause for concern, she moved with a sort of grace melded into athleticism borne out of frequent practice. Why a woman would be so skilled in traversing rooftops, he had no idea. But given how odd his day had been thus far, he simply chalked it up to the fact that Ostwick was obviously a much stranger place than he had imagined.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally! I've had this scene in my head for ages and ages and now I finally get to publish it. I really do apologize that it's taken so long for the two major characters to *actually meet* but I'm seriously excited now. Now I can talk about pretty dresses and parties and dancing and lawn croquet (okay, the last one isn't that exciting but whatever). Oh! And demons, of course, they will be showing up, poor neglected demons. Anyway, sorry about the delay for this remainder of Chapter 7, and thank you so much for reading!


	10. The Woman Who Searches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adelina and Cullen spend an afternoon together

This was all Sera’s fault, she was sure of it. Adelina snatched up a paper snagged on a chipped tile and looked forlornly at all the others carried away on the wind towards the coral tops of tiled roofs below.

Sera who always flung open the shutters, Sera who mysteriously disappeared twenty minutes before a ridiculously handsome man happened to just appear from nowhere. Adelina paused, clutching the music to her chest as trickster breezes attempted to pull it back out of her gloves. She glanced back at the tower. He was still there, leaning over the lip of the archway.

His profuse apologies were like notes she couldn’t quite keep in her pocket. She was constantly taking them out to read and re-read over and over again, savoring the words until the paper was worn thin between her fingers.

She had a strange fixation with voices. The workshop could attest to her fascination with instruments of all kinds--most of which were procured from the docks where sailors from all across Thedas parted with them in exchange for ready money. But voices were her favorite--the blind pastry chef’s husky alto, the rumbling basso profundo of a burly stevedore, the bright mezzo-soprano shared by all her sisters.

He had a wonderful voice. A rich lyric tenor. Already, she was thinking of something for it. Something reverent, a hymn perhaps.

‘I’m so terribly sorry.’

Yes. She thought a hymn would suit him well.

Adelina shook her head as if she could physically rattle out the echoes lingering there. Taking one last look out at the city and committing the trajectories of the last fluttering scraps of white to memory, she turned back for the bell tower.

The ledge below the lip of the archway was just high enough that she needed to use her hands to pull herself up. But the music crumpled in her gloves presented a troubling dilemma. She didn’t dare look up to see if he was watching her while she took her time to decide what to do. Something of the prickling at the back of her neck told her that he was, likely thinking on how odd her behavior was.

“Do you need assistance?” he asked politely.

“No, no, that’s quite alright.” She stared down at the papers and then, having made her decision, folded them up and stuffed them into the waistline of her skirt. Well, it was the better alternative to carrying them in her teeth like a complete fool.

Despite her claim that she did not need help, he reached out and placed a steadying hand at her elbow as she climbed up onto the ledge. It was nothing, barely a touch at all, but she was suddenly aware of the heat of his hand through the thin material of her sleeve. She flushed, and her bare foot tangled up in the fabric of her skirt, sending her stumbling forward as she stepped onto the lip of the archway.

He caught her. Really, he had no choice being that she had been about to fall onto him--it was that or let her simply flatten him. The arms wrapped around her shoulders were just as warm as his hand and his chest was reassuringly solid against her palms trapped between them. She was not often embraced and despite knowing that there was no real intent behind it, part of her did not seem to care. It felt like finding a patch of sunlight. In concert, her muscles relaxed as her whole body sighed with the feeling.

Looking up tentatively, she met his eyes. As close as they were, she could see that first glance had done them a great disservice. They caught the light now, flashing rare glimpses of gold like a secret coin kept between cupped fingers. Something passed between them, traversing still air and still breath and for a dizzying moment she thought he might be able to see into her isolation and her loneliness, into the hollowness beneath the fragile shell of flesh and bone. For a moment, she thought she could see the twin of it casting a gilt shadow.

But the moment passed. He shook his head and broke his gaze, releasing her and stepping away as he did so. Too-cold air rushed up between them and she thought she might be the biggest fool in Thedas as she let her palms trail down in the empty space. A total stranger, how starved for human contact was she?

The both of them were mortified and seeing his own flush made her feel much less self-conscious about hers. He apologized again, reaching up to rub the back of his neck. A nervous habit, she’d gathered.

“Really, there is no need to apologize,” she said voice pitched too high. The attempt to sound flippant failed miserably, coming out forced and stilted--the very opposite effect than the one she intended.

Despite herself, she glanced between the music papers liberated from her skirt and the pile he had weighed down with the thumb harp--her latest acquisition--on a nearby stool. The stack was noticeably thinner. She could not stop the look of pained dismay.

“Is there nothing I can do?” he asked, noticing and obviously feeling badly over the whole thing.

She was attempting to tuck her bare toes beneath the hem of her skirt--but it simply wasn’t long enough. There was no doubt he could see them anyway so she gave up the pretense and retrieved her buttoned boots.

Perching on an archway lip, she decided that she had already been shockingly inappropriate around this complete stranger as it was. Putting on boots in front of him could hardly be any worse.

“Not unless you fancy spending your afternoon combing through Ostwick.”

It had not been a serious suggestion, she smiled up at him, hoping to dissolve what remained of his guilt. She really didn’t hold him responsible. Now Sera on the other hand…

“You intend to try to retrieve them all?”

He had nice eyebrows, she noticed. They furrowed together now at her with disbelief but they were still nice--as far as eyebrows went.

“I’m afraid I must. Otherwise the teryn’s charity gala tomorrow night will be painfully awkward as they attempt to perform without music.”

It would take far too long to attempt to re-write what was missing without the use of a piano--the only instrument she did not have crammed into her workshop. The one at home was currently restricted to displays of feminine eligibility. Being decidedly not eligible, her access was as good as revoked.

She crossed one leg over the other to fasten up her boot  and her skirt slid up over her knee. Blushing furiously, she tugged it back down, snapping the buttons on her boot with unnecessary vehemence. Well, she had spent enough time at the docks, she supposed it was simply beginning to show.

Across the room, he coughed suddenly.

Taking care to not give him another dance hall styled display, she buttoned up her other heel and stood. He looked as warm as she felt. The bell chamber had never struck her as stuffy until that moment.

He coughed again and met her eyes. “I’m not familiar with the city, but if...if I could help”

What she meant to say was that it wasn’t necessary, but what she said instead was, “That would be very kind of you.”

Well, it would go quicker with two people after all. Grabbing her shawl--not the hideous plaidweave, Sera had run off with that--and hooding it over the windblown disaster that was her hair, she nodded for him to follow down the  narrow stairway.

It made the most sense to her to start in the area of town closest to the hill where the Chantry perched and she lead him through twisting labyrinths of cobblestone hemmed in at both sides by quaint houses built tall and so close together, you could barely fit a person in the alley between them. This area was mostly rows of houses interrupted by the occasional shop, so it was relatively quiet except for the delighted screams of children forced outside to play.

Ostwick was a town from a storybook. Adelina would know; when her third eldest sister Ema turned six, she received an illustrated book of folk tales made in Orlais. It was a terrifying present for a six-year-old, truth be told. The stories all had some gruesome turn for the sake of establishing a moral about the dangers of magic. But the illustrations were beautiful, delicately wrought in colored ink and gold leaf. So her sisters made their own versions of the stories from the pictures. Flora was the best at it.

Their favorite  was one story about a cobbler. In the original, Dalish elves had used magic to help the man with his work. Of course it turned out badly in the end, the cobbler was possessed by a demon of sloth and the trickster elves (who had been deviously plotting all along) made off with all his wares. But the awful story wasn’t what drew them--it was the portrait of the shop, nestled into a row of pastel shopfronts iced with white wooden lattices and baskets of geraniums.

It was Ostwick’s main square flattened and pressed onto a page and their versions always set the story in town. Their versions also involved the elves helpfully encouraging the man to reconsider his ill-suited profession instead of robbing him blind.

Which was much better. What use did Dalish elves have for shoes?

Focused on her task but raised to engage in polite conversation no matter what the situation, she asked him all the usual questions--if he’d ever been to Ostwick before, how long he intended to stay,  if he had made any plans to attend the theater. The truth was, she was too distracted to do anything beyond nod and make the appropriately dull comment. In the middle of telling him that he must take time to see a play during his stay, a  flutter of white caught her eye.

Adelina rushed forward, snatching it from the gutter and flipping it over to see if it was hers. It was and she flashed a very unladylike grin over towards him. “Second movement. First violins if I’m remembering correctly.”

She hummed a fragment of the melody to herself. Yes, that seemed right.

“Do you...ah...compose many pieces?” he asked, not knowing what to do with his hands and settling on shoving them into his coat pockets in a hesitant way.

“Oh yes,” she said, scanning up and down the street with a sharp eye for any more, “but this is my first...well...commission of sorts. Mostly I write arrangements for the invocations and hymns for the chantry choir.”

He stopped beside her suddenly and she turned, wondering what she had said that was so terrible.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“No, uhm...” He shook his head and smiled ruefully. “I just had the opportunity to listen to the choir this morning. It was…”

He faltered, eyes catching the light like rippling woodgrain beneath varnish; all warm and golden. They drifted up to meet her own. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I lack the ability to describe the experience.”

Her fingers tightened around the music. She’d heard people praise her work before, but no one had ever directed it _to_ her. Of course, because no one knew. They couldn’t, otherwise it didn’t matter how lovely the hymns were, no chantry choir would ever sing them.  She had thought it was inconsequential, that she missed out on nothing with Sera and Rosa keeping her identity hidden. But his words fisted around her heart and gripped it tightly until she was breathless.

She smiled, slightly dazed. “Thank you.”

His eyes were sincere but at the corner of his lips, a half-smile appeared like an afterthought. “For the hamfisted attempt at a compliment? My pleasure.”

That startled a laugh out of her and she remembered what she was supposed to be doing.

“I thought it was nice. Eloquence is overrated,” she said, peering over into an alley and taking care to check the wash lines crossing overhead. Someone’s underthings flapped on the line in the breeze.

“At least when it comes to compliments,” she added after seeing nothing and proceeding forward.

“Well that’s reassuring.”

“Its the truth,” she skirted a raised cobblestone with practice--Ostwick’s city streets were ancient and terribly uneven, “There is nothing worse than an eloquent compliment. They only make you uncomfortable.”

He seemed to consider her words and admitted honestly. “I would have to agree with that, but I’m just as terrible receiving compliments as I am giving them.”

“Perhaps you just value truth without adornment,” Adelina offered and he chuckled.

“That's a very charitable interpretation.”

Then he was gone, across the street and producing a sheet of music from a window planter full of the season’s last geraniums.

Adelina took it from him--part of the cello harmony--and said archly, “I begin to see your point about being terrible about receiving compliments.”

Between them, they had managed to find at least three more sheets before noon. Which, if her memory was correct, left them with at least three more to go. Perhaps it would have been better to attempt a re-write and just fudge the missing parts with something simple. If only the idea didn’t needle her pride so much.

They had reached the lanes curving around the main square. She was well familiar with this area, her favorite cafe and pastry shop was just around the corner. Suddenly ravenous, she left him alone to finish searching the narrow alleyway.

Just before turning the corner, a young boy sidled up to her and stared intensely--eyes crossed as hard as possible. After a moment, he gave up and shot a look back to the gaggle of his peers watching carefully from their hiding place. He frowned at her.

“It di’nt work!”

Adelina smothered her smile in the face of his very real distress. “Perhaps you shouldn’t believe everything you hear then.”

Not taking the lesson to heart, he looked about to burst into tears. “It di’nt work and I bet my only penny it would and now I won’t get any sweets!”

She knelt beside him and said, “Well, that won’t do after you were so brave.”

Most children weren’t actually afraid of her. They generally treated her with undisguised fascination, as if she were a strange but probably harmless variety of beast. It was refreshing compared to the shuttered looks and pretense she received from adults.

“Perhaps you could help me,” she asked, “I need someone brave to buy four jam pastries from that shop. Do you think you could?”

He stared at her with bright eyes before nodding mutely.

She gave him the money from her pocket. “Make sure to buy one for your reward.”

Disappointment forgotten with the promise of treats in the near future, he nodded eagerly and almost ran off before stopping and asking her, “Does that mean Willis was full of spit when he said her Lady Trevelyan hides demons up her dress and that’s why it’s so poofy?”

Adelina resisted the urge to laugh and straightened up, flattening the creases in her skirt as she stood. It had been mean-spirited, after all, to start rumors about her own mother no matter how aggravating she had been over the past few days. “I’m afraid so, I think it’s safe to say that she stuffs her dresses with nothing more than lace petticoats.”

He seemed to think on this for a second before remembering his errand and dashing off.

There was the sound of shoes on stone behind her and she stood and turned to see...well, she still didn’t know his name. To ask would have provoked the same question in turn and it was one she didn’t like answering. It didn’t matter if he wasn’t from Ostwick, it was only a matter of time before he heard the local rumors and then everything would change.

He was watching her with the sort of look that said he was attempting to puzzle something out. Her, perhaps. But in a second it was gone and he offered up the three sheets of music in his hands. “I found a secret horde tangled up in someone’s laundry. I’m afraid they are slightly damp.”

They were damp, the black shapes of the music notes having taken on a faint purple halo as the pigment hazed out around them. They were still readable at least, and they smelled pleasantly of laundry soap.

Before she could thank him, the boy returned, mouth smeared with jam and busy chewing. He handed her the paper bag bearing several red fingerprints and took off to find his friends without a word.

She laughed, gingerly gripping it so as to not get raspberry over her gloves. Perhaps she should’ve requested another filling, one less likely to stain.

“That's all of them by my count. Would you care to join me for a reward in the form of pastry?”

“Yes, I uh, I would like that.” He shoved his hands in his pockets again and stared off after the boy. “This town seems to take its folklore very seriously. Curses, witches and that sort. Does everyone actually believe it?”

Around the bag, her fingers trembled but her voice was firm when she said, “Absolutely.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, I wanted to thank everyone who has taken the time to read this fic. I know lengthy fics are a large time investment and I really appreciate everyone who has ventured into this strange version of Thedas with me. As always, comments and kudos are amazing and I adore every single one, they warm my finals-shriveled heart.
> 
> On a second note, I have finals this week and the next on top of moving, so the next chapter may be delayed. I'm so sorry! Hopefully this won't be the case and Cullen can get to test his investigative instincts over pastries. 
> 
> On a random note, does anyone else prefer the 'girl' terminology over 'woman'? I get that using the word 'girl' to describe someone in mid-twenties isn't very accurate but I still prefer the word so much more. I think it comes down to individual preference, but I know some people get very offended by the usage of 'girl' so I erred on the safe side.


	11. The Investigator and the Sleepwalker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Identities are revealed

Cassandra’s advice to him in back at the Chantry before she departed was equal parts simple and useless to him. Follow his instincts. He hadn’t told her that his instincts had served him well enough when it came to avoiding bullets and shrapnel in the trenches, but not at all beyond those second to second moments of survival. 

Marian Hawke was a woman of instincts and they kept her alive long after the other wiring sappers, sure, but always mired in trouble. Cullen much preferred to have a plan. Being without one felt like strolling into no man’s land without a pistol--which, come to think of it, was something Hawke had actually done.

So how did he find himself here in the first place, agreeing to stay when he knew that he should take his leave and head back to the Chantry before it was too late in the day? The mention of the Trevelyans when she spoke with the boy, he thought. Perhaps she could tell him some new snippet of information missed by Leliana’s agents.  But even to him that was too thin to hold. He would find better answers with a family member than with this mysterious woman. It was a hunch and nothing more keeping him from returning to the Chantry. That irked him.

“Well, it won’t do to set up a picnic in the middle of the road,” she said, interrupting his thoughts, “But I think I may know of a better location.”

He nodded, allowing her to take the lead.

To complicate things, she was pretty--with features that would have been too severe had it not been for the girlish softness smoothing over the high curve of her cheekbones and a chin that was equal parts stubborn and delicate. He found himself glancing over at her too often as she lead them through twisting alleyways out into the main square. Maker take Cassandra and her vague advice. He was no detective. Who was to say that his hunch wasn't something else entirely; something that had possessed him after this strange woman had gone soft in his arms with a sigh warming his neck.

The memory rang through his bones with a sound like a bell.

She stopped suddenly, whirling around to look at him...no, she wasn’t looking at him, she was looking behind him. Cullen turned as well and the bells rang out again.

Doors were opening and people were pouring into the street, all eyes fastened to the hill where the Chantry dome gleamed like sea glass in the afternoon sun.

“The Divine has been elected!” a woman next to him cried, waving her arm up in joy and forgetting that she carried a whisk dripping with batter in her hand. Cullen wiped the wet mixture  from his cheek where she had unintentionally splattered him with her motion.

A cry went up in the crowd then, joy and awe spilling out from hundreds of voices. All at once, they were moving, a river of human bodies surging forward, carrying him on the tide. It was impossible to stay still and he caught a kick in the shins for his trouble. As Cullen stumbled forward, he searched the faces surrounding him but there was no sign of his companion. She was gone, lost in the wash of strangers. He did not even have a name to call out for and the realization that he had no way of finding her in the crowd was an unexpected jab of dismay in his gut.

Cullen quickly realized that a joyful mob was not much different from an angry mob--the street was a whirling mass of shouting and jostling limbs. It was all he could do to keep up to avoid being trampled under the parade of the devout. He thanked the Maker for sturdy boots as someone trod over his toes without apology.

Suddenly, he was pulled sideways. The motion propelled him into the recess of a deserted lane and he kept his balance enough to avoid slamming face-first into a plaster wall. Instead, he was pinning someone to it, her head barely coming to his chin, mussed strands of her hair tickling his jaw. There was the sudden scent of pine resin, strong black tea, and caramels wrapped up in twists of wax paper. He didn't notice her wince of pain until she sucked in a breath and brought her gloved fingertips up to probe at the back of her skull. Then he felt terrible.

"Maker's breath, I'm sorry. Are you hurt?"

“Just a minor head wound,” she said, tipping up a rueful smile towards him, "Colliding into each other might not be the best way to go about things."

Cullen breathed in sharply, the air gone sweet around him, and stepped away from her with a heavy exhale. Her right hand was still resting at the crook of his elbow and the pressure of it was terribly distracting. His thoughts deserted him; scattering away like autumn leaves.

“Perhaps not.” 

Her eyes danced with amusement. There was something about her avid expressions, an arresting vitality that practically glowed in the dim shadows of the alley. Next to her he felt drab, as if he'd been washed too many times--worn thin in a few places.

"Well, I did start it in the tower. I suppose I can't begrudge a settled score," she said.

His chuckle echoed over plaster walls and drew the curious glances of some in the crowd still milling past them in the street.

Turning her head from the inquisitive stares, she made to pull up her shawl but then realized, with a look of faint surprise, that it was gone. The loss of it seemed to dismay her and Cullen stepped back to search for it. Perhaps she had dropped it in the street close by.

At his arm, her hand tightened. “No, it’s alright. Probably stuck to the bottom of someone’s shoe and halfway to the plaza by now.”

Checking the fold of papers tucked into the waistline of her skirt, she tugged him in the opposite direction. Cullen followed.

They turned into a packed street and then into another abandoned lane before coming up to a small wooden door at the back of an impressively large building. In the distance, he could still hear the cries of the crowd but they were muffled by the bulk of the structure.

She opened the door and suddenly they were in a narrow, poorly lit hallway. Leading him through pokey corners and up several flights of creaking stairs, she finally came to a stop at a door on the fourth floor. Through it, he could hear singing.

“Where are we?” he asked, noticing that her hand now rested firmly in his own, a pleasant pressure against his fingertips. At her wrist, the edge of her glove revealed a line of bare skin and as his thumb brushed over it, he could feel her pulse stutter.

Rather than answer, she flashed him a glance back over her shoulder--the sort people used when daring others to do things they shouldn’t be doing. Then the door opened, revealing a wooden walkway extending out into forest fixed to ceiling rails.

“I did recommend that you visit the theater.”

They were on the catwalk. People milled around the stage far below and a woman in a glittering white nightgown was rehearsing some trilling melody in Antivan. To his left, the heavy fold of the gathered velvet curtains swayed and to his right leaned painted scenery. A full moon, propped up at an angle against the wall, rose up to the shadows of the ceiling. Ropes looping around the railing descended down to the stage, clouds and stars fixed on the ends.

“Oh, the aria from the second act.” She pressed forward against the rail, utterly absorbed.

He joined her, leaning over to peer down at the figures through the painted heavens. Carpenters sawed away at last-minute props while stagehands replaced electric bulbs and swept up and down the aisles for debris left by the last night’s audience. It was another performance entirely; the life of the stage playing out in front of the cheapest seats in the house. Amid the cacophony, the soprano’s voice was perfectly clear. It sounded like heartbreak.

“What does she say?” he asked.

“Hear me, crime so great comes not of me,” she translated, “that I am guiltless, I still swear it.”

Stage lights from below caught her profile, setting the hints of copper in her hair aglow like banked embers. It was wild without pins or a shawl to tame it, flaming strands tumbling forward over her shoulders to coil on the wood.

“The character is a somnambulist. In this act, her fiance has forsaken her.“ She turned and offered a sheepish smile in apology for her distraction. “It’s a nice opera but all the interesting things happen when she is asleep.”

Making her way to the other side of the catwalk where a small table and two chairs nestled into a corner of the platform, she slipped her hand from his and removed the fold of papers at her waist.The rather flat looking paper bag still in her other hand, she took a seat, opened it up and peered inside.

“Hmm, this will require some delicacy.”

He sat in the chair, his knees meeting hers beneath the table to send a frisson through his limbs.

“Is it alright that we’re here?” he asked as she gingerly reached inside to procure a circle of golden dough filled with a dollop of raspberry jam.

“Oh yes, I come here often.” She paused and he suspected that she was deliberating over whether or not to tell him more. With a careful glance towards him, she made up her mind, but he was completely unsure if he had been found trustworthy enough for the full tale.

“The stage manager had some trouble a year ago. I had helped her and after, she was so grateful that she allowed me to visit whenever I wish. Well...I had already been doing that but now I have her permission.”

Taking the pastry she offered, he asked, “What sort of trouble?”

Lyrium withdrawal had dulled his appetite with the frequent bouts of nausea. It was all too easy to forget to eat and when he took a bite, he was reminded how long it had been since his last meal. To the baker’s credit, it was delicious--tart and sweet with a creamy middle that tasted something like a mild soft cheese. He finished the entire thing and swiped flecks of crust from his hands and clothing.

She picked out the others and set them all on top of the paper bag, which she flattened to form a makeshift plate for them before answering his question, “The usual trouble back then. Extortionists. They attempted to set fire to the back of the stage during a performance after her husband refused to pay them what they demanded.”

Feeling suddenly restless, his hand absently reached into his waistcoat pocket to wrap around the reassuring weight of the watch within. “How did you prevent them? Did you alert the authorities?”

It was difficult to read her expression and despite not knowing her at all, he had the suspicion that years of acquaintance would not help him in deciphering it.

“No, they do not involve themselves with crimes involving Ferelden immigrants.”

Cullen shifted forward, brows furrowing. “You said this was usual?”

Gloved fingers smoothed down a rumpled corner of the bag. “Oh yes, in the Free Marches at least. It started in Kirkwall first and spread all over. The victims were usually immigrants.”

His mind turned rapidly. “These extortionists...did they belong to the anthroposophist movement?”

Despite the serious turn of their conversation, she laughed suddenly. “The...what? That sounds like nonsense that takes itself far too seriously. Is it some kind of group of academics?"

“It’s an occult movement that believes it is possible to manipulate matter and energy in the physical world through a special connection with a spiritual realm--an ability that only manifests in a select few.”

Across the table, she had gone very still and there was a fierce intensity in her eyes when she replied hotly, “They may pay lip service to some philosophical belief but the truth is that they’re nothing more than extortionists and murderers. We call them by their signature--a hand. ”

Yes, he had read in one of the reports that the militant faction used that symbol in the Marches, it was their most significant connection to the so-called curse on the Trevelyan woman. But there had been no mention of blackmail, or that the arson and bombings were motivated by greed rather than politics. He wondered if it was possible Leliana’s agents could have neglected to mention such a thing.

“I’ve read of some the events in the past year. None of the papers discussed extortion, they all made it out to be militant demonstrations.”

Her lips twisted, unhappy. “These people were intimidated, threatened. Most quietly tried to settle it without help for fear of retribution. If they were successful, they disappeared without their homes and businesses turned to rubble beforehand.”

“Disappeared? Did they run off?”

“Maybe, “ she said but he immediately saw that she did not believe it.

He pressed her further, “How many of their victims do you know of? Do you know their names?”

“My information is secondhand, I’m afraid. Things I’ve overheard at the docks or in the poorer areas of town. There was always talk of who had gone missing until a few months ago when it all suddenly stopped.”

It seemed to him that she was understating the extent of what she knew and from the stubborn set of her chin, pressing her for more information would be useless. She was protecting someone, he thought. Herself perhaps.

For a long moment, they sat without speaking, the soprano still practicing below amidst the furor of the stagehands shouting out instructions and the conductor berating his horn section for being flat. In his hand, the chain was cool.

“May I see your watch?” she asked suddenly and his hand froze before unfastening the chain from his waistcoat so that he could remove it from the pocket and hand it over.

She took it carefully. “An Etoras.”

Cullen was surprised she identified it without checking the back for the manufacturer’s family crest. From her tone, he knew that she was more than familiar with the company but said anyway, “Most people don’t know they make things besides pistols.”  
  
“Yes, which is a shame. Their timepieces are so well-made--diamonds in the jeweled movements.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, having no idea what that meant. From the way she said it, he could only assume that was a mark of quality.  “I must confess, I don’t know much about them.”

Green eyes glanced up from the back of the watch warmly and without judgement. “Pocket watches or their manufacturers?”

“Both,” he admitted.

She had lovely hands with long, clever fingers that easily flicked open the lid in a quick, elegant motion. Engraved on the inside was the original owner’s name.

“It was given to me by another man in my regiment,” Cullen explained.

Her fingers traced over the name and when she spoke, her voice was strange--sounding very far away, “Were you close friends?”

A bark of laughter escaped him. “No, he disliked me from the beginning.”

“Whatever for?”

Closing the lid, she handed the watch back over to him. He took it, the metal now warm from her touch.

“I told him that I had met his sister and that I respected the woman a great deal.”

“How rude of you,” she teased, “but if you weren’t close friends, why did he give this to you?”

He had considered this himself, after Carver Hawke had taken his last stone-rattled breath from calcified lungs. The rashvine gas worked quickly. Perhaps he had meant for Cullen to give it to his sister and lacked the time to say so...but when Cullen attempted to, Hawke had refused it. She knew her brother, she'd said, and the watch was not for her.

“We fought together,” he said, as if that was explanation enough.

It wasn’t, he knew that, not for anyone who hadn’t been there. Carver Hawke was prickly and hot-tempered and a complete ass at times, but none of that actually mattered when they were ankle deep in mud with rifles that kept jamming up.

She watched him carefully with a look that said she might understand a little of what he was trying to convey. Or at least, understood his feeble attempt at it.

“My father collects timepieces,” she said unexpectedly. “All the major dwarven manufacturing houses, all the minor ones too. They fascinated me in the same way instruments do and I wanted to see how they worked so I took one--his Etoras actually--and smashed it to pieces to get to all the little parts inside.”

Having some idea of the value of the watch in his waistcoat, Cullen asked, “What did your father do when he discovered?”

“Oh, he nearly burst into tears. I was five at the time and it terrified me that an adult could cry. I thought they were immune to tears. Just one glance at my pile of gold cogwheels and he was beside himself.”

She shifted in the chair, sitting at the edge and looking like she was about to flit away at any moment. “I spent years trying to put it back together for him.”

“Did you succeed?” he asked.

“No.” She laughed. Laughing came easily to her he had noticed. “No, and it didn’t dampen my curiosity either. But seeing this one now, I can’t help but remember and feel ashamed about it all over again.”

“All children have destructive tendencies.”

“Some more than others,” she said, smile bright and bitter all at once.

It was a smile that held secrets, secrets bound up in silence and darkness in the hope of being forgotten. But in the light of her eyes and the brilliance of her smile, they cast long shadows.

He suddenly, desperately, wished that he hadn’t been so reluctant to exchange that first vital piece of information; the coin and currency of all real human connection. Her name. He'd never asked for her name out of the fear of giving his own. He wished for the thousandth time that propaganda films and flashy headlines hadn’t turned introductions into terrible reminders of a past he desperately wanted to forget. It had been all too tempting to leave that marquee-light public image behind in Ferelden where it did not eclipse all that he did and would do.

Cullen was not that man, he did not want to be that man, but his ill-conceived attempt at escape was no solution.

“What is your name?” he asked softly.

“Who’s up here?” a voice called out imperiously and Cullen turned to see the woman who he could only assume was the stage manager framed in the door leading to the catwalk. She cast a searching glance behind him and the glare vanished. “Oh, my dear girl, it’s just you.”

Standing so rapidly, the motion overturned her chair, his companion gathered the fold of papers from the table. “Yes, my apologies, I was just showing my new friend your lovely theatre.”

Cullen stood as well, nodding his head in polite deference. “Cullen Rutherford, pleased to meet you.”

In seconds, the stage manager was by them with a demeanor strikingly different from before. She was girlishly effusive, practically fluttering with excitement. “My word, Captain Cullen Rutherford. Adelina, you did not tell me you knew someone so distinguished.”

Cullen looked up over the head of the stout woman now patting him on the arm and saying, “You’re much more handsome than the actor who played you. And so tall too! Is it too much to hope for vocal training?”

"Adelina?" he asked, mind reeling. It couldn't possibly be..."Adelina Trevelyan?"

He met her eyes and if her identity was in doubt before, the expression bound up in piercing green confirmed it beyond question. 

“I must be going,” she said, having taken the advantage of his distraction to maneuver herself so that she was now the closest to the door with the stage manager between them. 

The other woman was dismayed, but did not move her focus from him for more than a second. “Oh, must you leave so soon? Stay and convince this strapping young man to take up a career in theatre.”

Through the wooden planks of the walkway, shafts of stage lighting knifed through the dim. Adelina Trevelyan stood, bisected in the illuminating blade, and smiled. “I’ll leave that to you Mrs. Tynne.”

And then she was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back from the long break! Still have family filtering in to visit but I've been able to finish up the next chapter after this one, which should give me a head start to keep on weekly updates. This chapter was a bear to write and took foreverrrr. Of course, I wrote the one immediately after in a night, which is ridiculously fast for me. Hopefully Ch. 12 will have the same luck!
> 
> Sapper- Combat engineers. Wiring sappers specifically had the immensely dangerous job of cutting through barbed wire obstacles set up between trenches so that other soldiers could 'go over the top'.  
> Etoras-Dwarven house of the Smith caste. There will be more Dwarves, they aren't forgotten but they are quite happily kings of industry.  
> The Hand is based in part on The Black Hand in both its forms. The Black Hand was something of the proto-Mafia--carrying out extortions, bombings, and arsons from the 1850s up through the turn of the century. Another, separate group by the same name played a role in the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Of course, there's a bit more to The Hand but that falls into spoiler territory.  
> The words of the aria are from the opera 'La Sonnambula' by Bellini. I was pretty excited to find that Adelina Patti, a 19th century opera singer, played the role of Amina in a production. I decided to include this particular opera before finding any of this out so I was kind of tickled by the coincidence.


	12. The Guide and the Demon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adelina and Dorian visit the docks.

“And where might you be off to at this Maker-forsaken hour?” asked a voice from behind her.

Adelina stopped, hand already dropping the apple back into the basket on the counter. She turned to face him. “I was going for a scenic walk.”

Dorian did not believe that one bit and conveyed as much with a flat expression. “Ahh, yes, the perfect time to take in all the beauties of nature--nearly an hour before sunrise.”

“I have excellent night vision,” she informed him, plucking the apple back up and slipping it into her pocket where it formed a bulge at her hip.

His eyes narrowed in a play at seriousness. “You scamper off to whoever knows where at all hours of the day and abandon me to hours of dull conversation. Have you no compassion? I thought you had grown fond of me in this short time. Or, at the very least, did not wish to see me dead.”

“Dead?” she asked him, too innocently to be anything close to sincere. Had he been her mother, it would have earned her a huffy tirade on impertinence. However, had he been her mother, he would not have been caught dead in the kitchens in the first place.

“Yes,” Dorian answered seriously. “Dead. Perished from boredom.”

She pretended to consider the gravity of the situation, “I believe it is only possible for one to be rendered merely comatose from excessive boredom.”

“As if that is better?” he sniffed. “I refuse to accept my fate. I’m going with you. Bat watching or whatever you’re doing at four in the morning.”

Her smile faltered when she realized he was serious. Dressed impeccably in a smoking jacket of red velvet and dark trousers, he tapped his gold-tipped walking stick in an impatient rhythm against the top of his shining patent leather shoe. He was the perfect picture of a man who would be robbed the second he stepped onto the docks.

“I don’t think that is…”

“I’m not above alerting the house and foiling your excursion altogether.”

It was not a real threat, he was smiling too confidently to think he would need to rely on such tactics. His walking stick still tapped away, in a hurry for her to make up her mind already when they both knew she would eventually agree.

“It’s just that...I’m not walking in the most savory parts of town,” she attempted to explain.

“And you fear for my delicate sensibilities? That is very kind of you but no need to worry, I promise not to faint at the first sight of the impoverished.”

Adelina frowned, looking him up and down once again. “If you’re coming, you should change into something that doesn’t display your wealth so overtly to the criminal element."

Favoring her with an indulgent smile, he only said, “I can take care of myself.”

 

* * *

 

Ostwick had no beach, just jagged rocks and treacherous outcroppings that precipitously dropped into the pounding surf. The docks were secluded away from the town proper in an inlet of land more hospitable to ships that did not wish to be smashed to pieces. Warehouses radiated out from the water’s edge and jostled amongst each other up the sloping sides of the hills. Interspersed between them were the ramshackle houses of those, usually Ferelden immigrants, too poor to escape the waft of the fisheries.

As lovely as Ostwick was, she knew it only remained so because of the physical isolation of its seedier side. Tucked away as it was, it was easy for locals to forget that poverty and crime did indeed exist and most were content to do so.

“You are quite the tour guide,” Dorian appraised, as they wound their way through corrugated metal buildings caked over in rust and soot. “All the best sights of Ostwick”

The fog had rolled in, turning the streets into vague approximations of themselves. Gaslamps glowed faint through the grey, blooms of dull yellow unfurling through the sooty undercurrents that splashed damp over everything.  
  
To Dorian’s immense credit, the moldering stench of gutted fish and ash mingled up with seawater did not make him heave the way she had on her first trip here. Neither did he clutch a perfumed handkerchief over his mouth the way she’d seen some wealthy men and women do--perhaps because he did not come prepared with a pocket square to ruin.

If anything, he was excited. Energy coiled through his motions as if he expected something interesting to happen at any moment. She knew there was a reason she took to him so quickly. It certainly wasn’t whatever family ties existed between them--to this day, she was still unsure exactly how distantly they were related.  But that hardly mattered anyway, however diluted the blood ties were, they were only excuses for forging more important connections. Ones of business and marriage, but only the sort of marriage that people treat like a business.

“It must be strange to be the villains of our religion,” Adelina said, letting his quip go by and resuming their previous conversation.

Dorian shot her glance that said she might know a bit about that herself. “Villain is a strong word. I think to be a villain, first one must accomplish a dastardly feat of evil.”

The corner of his impeccably trimmed moustache twitched. “In the South, you see us more of as troublesome but incompetent pests. Very stupid rats that scratch pointlessly at a pantry door but never get in to make a mess of things. Not sure which I prefer.”

Adelina laughed. “Rats aren’t so bad. Some people tame them and keep them as pets.”

Dorian made a show of shuddering when the shadowed form of a building dislodged a piece of itself into the street. Wreathed in grey, it moved closer.

A man with the sunken-in jaw shuffled out from the haze. Adelina’s fingers touched on the metal in her pocket--an Etoras not of the timekeeping variety--and prepared for the flash of a knife.  However, as he reached into a threadbare pocket and produced a dull shiv, the air crystallized around them, growing cold and clear. Knife and hand stilled, frosted over and completely harmless. Stunned, he eyed his limb with the stupor of someone who had just been woken.

“Stop that,” Adelina hissed. “Unthaw him.”

Dorian feigned innocence but did as she said. “Stop what? I did nothing to encourage that fellow to reconsider his life of crime.”

“People have been taken to the sanitorium for less.”

She walked faster, thanking the Maker that the man was still too stunned to attempt to follow them.

“And they say _my_ country is barbaric,” he jested but then stopped, his hand reaching out to grab her arm as she did her best to put as much distance between them and the thief as possible, for Dorian’s sake. “You’re really concerned!”

“Of course I am!” she laughed in disbelief before seeing the seriousness of his expression. He looked stricken, as if she had just done something terrible. Not knowing what to do, she attempted to diffuse the intensity in his eyes with humor, “Only the best tour guides keep their patrons from being institutionalized.”

“I’ll be fine,” he assured her. The terrible look had gone but echoes of it still lingered in the grey-green of his eyes. It did not do much by way of convincing her and he noticed. “Really. People expect such tricks when you’re Tevinter. They don’t see what it really is because they don’t want to see.”

“Ostwick may be more superstitious than you believe. There is a reason illusionists of quality don’t perform here,” she reminded him, continuing their winding path towards the hulking masses of the ships weaving through the fog rising off the ocean. Their horns bellowed out in the distance.

“Perhaps we should go back to the manor then,” he said but the words were lost in the sudden echo of  screams over the water.

Adelina broke into a run.

 

* * *

 

A crowd had gathered around the scene. She had to push and shove through it, taking care to slap away the sly hands darting towards her pockets as she did so.

“That’s worth a bottle of the good stuff,” a voice rumbled from the center. It’s owner towered over the onlookers. As he was shirtless, it was easy to see the blackened edges of the multiple burn wounds still oozing at his chest, none of which seemed to bother him at all. Adelina was not surprised in the slightest to see him in the middle of a bloodbath. The Iron Bull and his private security firm had a knack for finding a fight.

The extent of the carnage, however, did take her aback. At least a dozen of the bodies were nothing more than blackened lumps still smoking on the wet cobblestones. The few that escaped the inferno had been mauled, clawed to pieces, as if by an animal. But she knew better than to think an animal had killed these dockworkers.

Everyone around her knew better too, but only because they had seen what had left the pile of sulfur ash and the smell that lingered on the tongue like a mouthful of dirty coins. Voices were muttering, casting fearful glances around.

Demon.

Adelina pulled her shawl up over her head and shoved her left hand in her pocket, hoping to shield some of the green light pulsing up from her gloved palm. Skirting around the perimeter the living had established around the dead, she slipped next to one of The Bull’s associates.

He was nursing an injured arm but thankfully, looked to have escaped other injury.

“Krem,” she whispered, trying her best not to draw attention to herself in the middle of a crowd that could turn angry mob in a second given the right provocation. Ostwick’s cursed woman at the scene of a demonic killing spree was, undoubtedly, the right sort of provocation. Her heart pumped fear into her veins.

Thankfully, he did not turn towards her. He made no sign at all of having heard her other than the even tone of his “Yes, my lady?”

“If you have time. The usual place.”

Someone jostled into her on purpose and she let them go rather than attempt to reclaim the stolen apple. It had not been her gun and at the moment, that was the only possession she had worth fighting over.

Krem simply nodded and she slipped away from the cluster of the paranoid and extremely dangerous. Perhaps it was her imagination, but their mutterings followed her, hurling at her like stones. Demon. Rip, tear, rend flesh and bone and sky.

Ducking behind a stack of crates, she clutched her hand to her chest where it sputtered and sparked green flame. There was no pain, but it ached. It ached like hunger, the kind that sat in her bones and gnawed until she was hollow and ready to snap. Death hung in the air and she knew that snapping would be easy. Rip, tear, rend.

She was humming, her voice hoarse with strain. Still, the words of the invocation came, soothing away the whisper of demons. _They turned against the Veil. Yet it would not give way._

It took a moment, but finally her hand was nothing more than a dull glow, barely visible underneath her glove.

 

* * *

 

Dorian was nowhere on the docks. She had no doubt that if he had been, she would have spotted him. Relief thrummed through her, quickly followed by concern. A Tevinter 'illusionist' would serve for a mob just as easily as she would. Luckily, he did not have a glowing hand to give himself away. The man could obviously take care of himself but she could not help but think that it would be better to find him and seek out Krem or Bull after.

Hidden in the shadow of a nearby warehouse, she made up her mind to attempt to find Dorian when Krem found her.

“Not wise to be hanging around here right now Miss,” he said, “no instrument worth what they’d do to you if they thought you had a hand in this business.”

She noticed that he did not ask if she actually had something to do with the demons or not. This sidestepping was something of a professional courtesy. Private security companies like the Chargers were not always employed to the best people. At least, unlike many others, the Iron Bull did not employ them in the business of strikebreaking. He claimed that he had no interest in unfair fights, and beating in the skulls of factory workers wanting better wages wasn’t his idea of a fair fight. Adelina had the sneaking suspicion that he was simply more interested in the higher payoff that came with more prestigious and dangerous work.

“What happened?” she asked.

Krem shifted his shoulder and winced down at his injured arm. “Demon. Just came out of nowhere. Took out the crew unloading the freighter that just docked.”

Her lips were compressing down in worry. “Is your arm alright? Were any of the Chargers hurt badly?”

Krem laughed her concern off, not maliciously. “Takes more than a rage demon to get us down. Look, come back later. We’ll still have your stuff from Kirkwall.”

“It’s not the instruments I’m worried about,” she said.

“That’s because you’re soft-hearted.” Krem smirked and the lopsided nature of it was endearing.

She had missed them but it wasn’t until that moment that she realized how much. The Chargers roamed all over the coast for work and it wasn’t often that business put them in Ostwick. They were a rough lot, Bull especially, but they treated her with the kind of affection she would show to a stray kitten. Except she never taught a stray kitten how to wire an explosive, throw a knife, or drink liquor.

Krem was giving her a look. “It’s a terrible thing that just happened but fact is you should be worried about yourself right now more than those stevedores. And more than us, we can take care of ourselves.”

Adelina sighed. He was right, there was nothing she could do, not right now. Sera’s network could find out if the dead had families that needed assistance but right now, she was just being reckless. At her side was a reminder of the heavy consequence of her behavior when she carelessly risked danger. Priceless watches that could never be unsmashed, golden coils unspooled forever no matter how hard she wished them back together again.

“Tell everyone…” she stopped, not knowing what to say. Part of her couldn’t help but feel partially to blame. Habit, perhaps. Everything sounded horrible in the face of her guilt.

“Tell them yourself, when you come by later. We’ll be here awhile yet and I have some good stories for you about the Champion of Kirkwall.”

Whatever faint smile she had for the sake of having vanished entirely in the memory of the day before. Sheet music and raspberry tarts and a man carrying the watch the the name ‘Hawke’ inscribed onto the inside of the lid. How could Thedas be so small, how could names from the past re-emerge, carried across the sea in the pockets of strangers?

Unsettled, she simply nodded absently, but before she turned to leave, Krem said, “Another thing…we found this nearby.”

In his hand was a paper, entirely blank save for the ink imprint of a hand.

 

* * *

 

She set out to look for Dorian but it turned out to be unnecessary as he found her first, behind a cluster of rundown warehouses only a hundred yards from where the attack happened.

“I take back what I said. You are a terrible tour guide,” he sniffed.

Her smile was a grimace. Realizing his humor was lost on her, Dorian simply followed her out from behind the buildings.

“Look, I already told you,” Iron Bull said, eyes flitting back over the head of cropped hair to meet Adelina’s before smoothly returning to the two people facing him, “don’t know any...who was it again?”

“Trevelyan. Adelina Trevelyan.”

In the second it took to register the other person standing with them, she was darting back behind into the cover of the warehouse wall, yanking Dorian with her.

“Right.” Bull said, “Then in that case...still no.”

It was still easy to hear them and she wondered if they had overheard her own mad scramble to get out of sight. Or the roar of blood thudding in her ears as her heart raced with excitement or fear, she could not distinguish which.

“Fine. But did you see anyone who looked like her? Did you see who summoned it?”

It was a woman’s voice and it didn’t convey the impression of patience. It also sounded like the limited supply had already run dry. Long ago.

“Reddish brown hair?” Iron Bull asked and then made a low, lustful noise of appreciation, “seen a few. Not the ladylike type though, if you catch my meaning.”

His unsubtle insinuation was met with a disgusted noise from the woman.

“Do you think The Hand was behind this?” he asked and the sound of his voice gripped her by the ribs and pulled. Cullen. His name was Cullen.

“Not their usual MO,” Bull answered, “but one of my men picked up something you might want to see.”

The sound of footsteps drew away just as the tension in her limbs bled out all at once and very suddenly. Luckily, she was able to lean against the side of the warehouse wall rather than pitch forward onto the cobblestones. Rust streaked her shirtwaist but she found herself unable to care.

Dorian was looking at her curiously, one eyebrow raised. “Friends of yours?"

“No,” Adelina said, marveling at the strange disconnected quality of her own voice. Had he known who she was all along? Was it all just an elaborate manipulation?

She had a dozen questions and no answers save for one: she had been a complete and utter fool.

 

* * *

 

When they reached the manor, someone was waiting for her in the kitchen’s herb garden.

“Some things never change,” Rosalina sighed, and then after assessing the state of her clothing and hair, “Maker’s breath Adelina, did something happen?”

“We went on a tour of the city,” Dorian cheerfully informed her. “Dorian Pavus. Pleasure to make your brief acquaintance, but if you’ll excuse me, I believe I smell strongly of dead fish.”

With that farwell, he left them alone in the garden.

Rosalina looked uncharacteristically distressed. “Lena, I tried to find you all afternoon yesterday.”

The memory of what she had been doing yesterday afternoon and who she had been with made her flush over with anger and something else she was too irritated to put a name to, “Sorry, I was...out.”

“Yes, well, perhaps you would do better to stay in more often,” her sister snapped, temper already flaring. Spending her days in the grace of the Maker had done some good but she was still more volatile than most.

“I’m sorry, but it’s the truth” --was her snippish apology and Adelina knew that she meant it to sound nicer than it came out.

Rosa pinched the bridge of her nose before continuing on,“Two people came to visit me yesterday morning. A seeker.”

The woman with the short hair and imperious voice questioning Iron Bull. Adelina nodded. “And a man?”

“Yes!” Green eyes widened.

The two of them had their mother’s eyes. Wide, vivid green flecked with gold and slightly upturned at the outer corners. Lady Trevelyan could intimate a thousand different things with her eyes, turn them sultry or sweetly innocent without pause. They were her greatest physical assets, the traps that ensnared a bann from the stage. It was an inheritance wasted on a Chantry sister and a daughter no one in their right mind would seriously consider.

Now they narrowed at her. “How did you know...did you already run into them?”

“They were asking questions after a demon attack.”

Rosalina blanched. “A demon--was it you?”

“No!” she cried, knowing that she had no right to feel stung by the question but feeling it anyway. It could have been her, in the past it had been her and that was what mattered. “There was no rift. Just the demon.”

Rosalina reached forward and brushed a stray curl of hair off her forehead. “Just...be careful. Maybe you should stay home until they leave Ostwick. You could pretend to be ill.”

The sanitorium loomed in both of their minds like a ship in the fog and Adelina suppressed a shudder and squared her shoulders.

If there was one thing she learned from her mother, it was that the only way to face scrutiny was head-on. She would not slink away, waiting for the day when they came to the house to take her away. No, she would meet them, she would smile pleasantly and be the picture of Thedas’s most devout cursed woman.

“I wish I could,” she said, “but I’ve decided that I’ll be going to the teyrn’s charity gala tonight and I need to find something suitable to wear.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to thank you all for being the best, most amazing people on the internet. I can't say how much I love reading comments, although my moving-damaged computer has put me behind in replies. I'm sorry but I love you and you're all magnificent tropical fishes <3 <3 <3
> 
> The Bull's Chargers security company is loosely based on the Pinkerton detective agency, which functioned from the 1850s through the turn of the century as private security for businesses, participating in general assholery on behalf of industries. They also hunted down outlaws, which is more what the Chargers specialize in in this story, the most notable being Jessie James. Did anyone watch that movie with Colin Farrell? He was adorable, but anyway, the fictional version of the Pinkertons is pretty on par with what they did in real life, ie: strong-arming people into falling in line with unscrupulous business practices.
> 
> The Chargers were a late addition to this fic and I'm in love with Krem a thousand times over. Writing his character in has made a little Krem/Adelina or Krem/anyonereally ship in my heart. I blame the amazing voicework of Jennifer Hale.


	13. The Blind Man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter grew into a monster, even after I cut some significant portions, so I've split it up and will be posting the next part tomorrow after some more editing :)

Cullen watched the fire sputter in the grate, sparks thrown off to hiss on the damp stone floor. Through the roof, the enterprising mussel farmer had cut a jagged hole, but the smoke seemed just as content to stay in the one room shack as it was to rise up into the grey-clotted sky.

The man was talking in an especially rough variant of a Starkhaven accent, making it hard to distinguish what he was saying without concentrating intensely. Cullen could not concentrate and sank his head into his upturned palms for a moment of reprieve from the smoke tearing at his eyes.

“Aye miss. Saw it me'self, her eyes glow in the shadows.”

Cullen saw green eyes flashing an unspoken challenge back towards him in a dim hallway and the beguiling curve of a smile holding the promise of something beautiful beyond doors of plain wood and peeling paint. For a second, he could almost hear the flat horn section just beyond the flimsy wall of sodden planks and the world seemed a bit brighter. To think, he'd spent so much time with those damn folders filled to the brim with details about her in some futile attempt to deduce what sort of person their mysterious suspect was. And after yesterday, none of it fit. These interviews hardly helped. They'd yet to hear anything approaching reasonable and he was losing his patience with the accounts of glowing eyes, horns, and weeping statues of Andraste. Ridiculous. 

The man’s knife rasped along the edge of the shell.

“Glowed?” Cullen challenged. "You really expect us to believe that?"

Fingers froze over the glistening shell and then fumbled, the mussel slipping away to bounce back into the basket with a hundred clattering sounds, “Well I...didn’t see it me’self but my wee one--” the farmer jerked his thumb towards the corner where a little girl played silently with a ragged doll.

Cassandra shot Cullen a glance--sharing his exasperation with these familiar fabrications--before asking, “What of your wife. We were told she disappeared almost six months ago.”

The stage manager, Mrs. Tynne had enthusiastically furnished whatever tidbit of information she could on The Hand’s extortion victims, at his request.  Cassandra had hoped to glean some information about the attack while they were out talking to the families of the missing people. So far, they’d learned nothing.

“Aye she did,” the man snarled, resuming his business. Cullen worked his jaw, feeling every pop and slurp of the mussels in his joints, every scrape of the knife against his skull.

“Ran off, took what little we had, and left me with the wee one.”

“Are you certain she ran off? Perhaps she was taken,” Cassandra asked.

“The woman ran off. We had just about enough to get out of this place and move to the city proper. She was doing well, best seamstress in these parts. Had a shop.” He sighed and Cullen caught a flicker of sadness in the slump of his shoulders. “Milly was...the woman had a keen business sense, I’ll say that for ‘er.”

From the corner, the little girl’s head came up with a clear, questioning stare. The doll dangled from her hands, as she drew closer, “Mama?” Is Mama coming home soon?”

The doll, Cullen realized, had been painstakingly stitched from fine cloth--the obvious product of love--but now it was covered in ash, seams ripped and stuffing flat where the girl gripped it.

“Mama said she would be back,” she said. “She told me to be a good girl until she did, she told me not to play on the rocks anymore because if she was gone, she couldn’t fix me like she before. But I did anyway, see.”

She extended a small arm to show them her scraped wrist. “Mama made it go away last time.”

The man was standing, clapping a hand over his daughter’s mouth and pulling her close to his body. “Wee ones and their stories. We’re just simple folk, by the blessed Andraste, religious folk. Me wife, well she may ‘ave had a touch of something but she’s gone now. No need to...”

He was staring at Cassandra, hand trembling over his daughter’s face.

She stood and offered the man a nod. “Thank you for your time.”

* * *

“They were all mages,” Cassandra said between puffs of her cigarette.

“All sixteen?” Josephine frowned. “Maker...that we know of, there could be more.”

Solas was scrutinizing the both of them. “Your interrogative technique must be remarkable, Seeker, to extract that sort of information from them.”

Around the cigarette, her lip curled up at the corner. “It was Cullen’s doing.”

After the mussel farmer, they had switched tactics. Adults were too afraid, too convinced that the so-called affliction was contagious and that any admission of missing family members possessing unusual abilities to a Seeker would have been met with immediate institutionalization. Sanatoria were, after all, the result of the Chantry’s charitable efforts. And it was through the Chantry’s lyceums that doctors were trained. A Seeker of the Faith was as much of a living embodiment of the institutions as the actual buildings themselves.

But these children had no idea what Cassandra’s lapel pin meant and without compulsory medical examinations in Ostwick, most had yet to learn the fear in their parents’ eyes.  Like the little girl when her mother healed her cuts, they saw magic the way an illusionist’s audience saw it--as delightful tricks.

“See Cullen, your concern over your abilities was unwarranted,” Josephine said, obviously noting the weary hunch of his shoulders and mistaking it for discouragement. “What of Adelina Trevelyan though? Any evidence of her involvement?”

“The symbol is likely a coincidence,” Solas said, not meeting any of their eyes as he rubbed his thumb over the wolf’s head sculpted at the top of his walking stick.

“There are the financial exchanges as well,” Josephine reminded him. “The Trevelyans have sold off quite a bit of land over the past four years and much of it has fallen into the hands of known radicalists in Kirkwall.”

“Through several intermediaries beforehand,” he noted evenly.

“We think we can place her at the docks this morning,” Cassandra said, after finishing the last of her cigarette and producing a new one from her case and lighting it, “and some of the victims’ families claimed to recognize a woman by her description.”

“From what I’ve gathered, that is not an uncommon claim.” Solas interjected, with the same degree of dispassion he would devote to a conversation on the relative merits of white wine versus red, “She’s a local legend, an infamous one. People always see what they fear in the shadows.”

Cullen continued to watch the fire crackle behind the grate of iron worked into a filigreed shape of a wheel of cheese. The Golden Rind had lavish rooms, to his eye at least, and there were homages to the namesake in most of the decor. But something about the twisting iron made the shadows cast by the flames skitter like rats over the brickwork. Or perhaps it wasn’t the grate, he thought, when a shadow flicked a long, whiplike tail towards him before scurrying up and slipping into a crack.

“Perhaps,” Cassandra admitted, “but perhaps not. She was certainly at the theater the night of the attempted arson. The manager believes it to be a lucky coincidence. For Adelina Trevelyan to be entirely uninvolved with this business, that makes for one of many coincidences. Too many, in my mind.”

“But coincidence is still not evidence,” Josephine said, the glitter of her evening gown catching the firelight like a thousand black mirrors. It was a dazzling effect, but it unsettled him. In his mind, it looked like eyes--beady eyes luminous in the darkness.

“Are you certain you don’t want to interview her directly?” Josephine asked, but Cassandra was already shaking her head. “No, if she is involved, it will only serve to warn the others. Then they would go into hiding until we leave.”

“You could offer her freedom in return for theirs,” Solas suggested. “Isn’t that a common technique for producing informants?”

“Or liars.” Cullen cut in. “Until we have real evidence, such techniques could only make the truth harder to find.”

“You’ve been the only one to meet her Cullen,” Josephine said, “was there anything at all that would convince you one way or the other?”

A cigarette case came into his field of view and he looked up to see that Cassandra had already finished and stubbed out the last and was offering him one from her case as she selected another. He realized she was nervous. Perhaps she thought he was nervous as well.

He took it and the lighter she offered. Lighting the cigarette, he took a deep, punishing drag.

Adelina Trevelyan smelled like caramels, her laugh had a catchy sort of music to it that echoed around in his mind even now, light seemed to gather in the green of her eyes and threw off verdant sparks when she talked in a low, fervent whisper. She was nothing like he thought she'd be and none of those details burning bright trails through his thoughts would answer Josephine's question at all. 

“I only remain convinced that perception can be easily led astray,” Cullen said finally. “We need real evidence.”

The clock struck five and Josephine stood with a sigh. “We should be leaving.”

* * *

From miles away they could see it. Strands of lanterns looped over garden walls like a choker of glowing pearls draped over the hillside. At the center of it stood the manse, alight from the inside, pouring gold out into the rosy dusk through rows of open balcony doors.

Cullen groaned and without care for the look it might incite from Josephine, tugged at his collar.

But Josephine was too busy fidgeting with her own gloves to notice. She stared out towards the incandescent bauble on the horizon and pressed her lips down together tightly.

“You’re worried,” Cassandra said, “we all are.”

“I’m not worried,” Josephine assured the  entire cab, “I simply...am concerned. I’m not ready to abandon our investigation just yet. Especially not after this morning’s events at the docks. We must take care to make sure everything goes perfectly.”

Her eyes lingered on Cassandra and Cullen. “It is vital that we strictly adhere to local etiquette. Regardless of how...unpleasant it may be to certain individuals.”

Cassandra narrowed her eyes at the spontaneous lecture. “We are not children, Josephine, we are well aware.”

“I somehow have the feeling that children would be easier to manage,” Josephine muttered to the window.

“Let us hope that the new Divine will not base her judgement of this investigation’s progress solely on the Seeker’s lightness of foot,” Solas mused.

Cassandra huffed and said nothing, the jut of her chin conveying that they did not even deserve a response.

 

 


	14. The Man With Good Advice

But it was not Cassandra who needed to worry about social etiquette. Almost immediately, the woman cloistered herself up in a cluster of cigar-smoking ladies and gentlemen gathering by one of the archways to the garden terrace. She endeared herself to them by the mere virtue of producing a cigar of her own in their periphery.

“That man to her left is the teyrn of Ostwick,” Josephine informed them, voice low so as not to be overheard, “and the woman to her right is the constable.”

Solas smiled. “Clever maneuvering on the Seeker’s part.” Then, seeing the narrowed expressions cast his way, he departed as well with a mockingly serventile bow towards his ‘employers’.

What followed was a veritable whirlwind of pastel, lace, and perfume doused on so heavily, the individual scents coalesced into a miasma of noxious floral. Josephine had produced cards for the both of them and Cullen checked the urge to stuff his in the closest tray of champagne flutes carried aloft by the staff. Instead, he snatched up a glass of punch and gulped down the contents as rapidly as possible while Josephine made introductions.

Cullen nodded in turn, beginning to feel like a very polite automaton when everyone repeated the same questions and remarks over and over again, a circuitous farce of conversation. No, he had never visited Ostwick before. No, he did not think the actor looked very much like him. Yes, it was a pleasure, the pleasure was all his own. No, he did not care to dance at the moment, but perhaps later.

Josephine was in her element, cleverly turning inane topics into opportunities for gathering real information. At the moment, she was discussing the relative merits of elven household staff with a ruddy-faced man who Cullen had recently come to learn was ‘excessively fond of a good hunt’.

“Of course, even if we wished to take the risk and employ them, there are barely any left after the liquidation of the alienage all those years ago,” the man said, “a shame when their labor comes so cheaply.”

Cullen suppressed his disgust, recalling those grim details from Leliana’s portfolio. But despite his best efforts, his fingers were too tight around the stem of his newly filled glass as he drank. The punch was too sweet, sloshing syrupy against his teeth. He suddenly felt too closed in, the air collecting like water in his lungs, ready to drown him in the currents of perfume and callous ignorance.

“And soon it will be the same everywhere,” his wife chimed in. “The price of silk and lace is already thrice the amount it was before the Howe measure passed.”

Around them, the voices dropped low, whispers rippling shockwaves of excitement through the press of tuxedos and evening gowns. Following the direction of turned heads, he could just barely distinguish the movement of upright feathers fluttering on the perfumed currents of the ballroom as they progressed through the crowd.

Immediately, the woman overly concerned with the price of silk and lace turned and whispered smugly, “Is it quite certain they’re from Tevinter? Why, they look almost civilized.”

“Not at all what I expected after The Magnificent Magister in Tantervale. So disappointing, not a single feather on them.”

“Perhaps Lady Trevelyan has borrowed all of their feathers for her hair.” The woman nearest to him, Lady Thornwick, snickered.

Josephine glanced his way discreetly before asking innocently, “The Trevelyans? I don’t think I’m quite familiar with that family.”

The question was, fundamentally, the equivalent of tossing a ham into a kennel of ravenous mabari. Cullen took the opportunity to step away before they began to tear into it.

Night air wafted in from the garden terrace, wicking warmth away from him as he loosened his collar and leaned against an alabaster pillar. Breathing deeply, he looked across the maze of hedges, the rooftop of a gazebo peeking up through it at the center. Sound traveled differently without a ceiling to contain it and he listened to the trilling laughter and buzz of conversation drift up and away into the night to be lost forever among the stars. Good riddance.

In the distance, he saw the dome of the chantry etched out against the night, a silver bowl floating on the distant horizon where dark seas met darker skies.

Was she there, in her bell tower workshop surrounded by instruments? Or somewhere else, setting into motion swaths of destruction the way a ship sluices through breaking waves, leaving only churning chaos behind; shattered families, children with scars and dolls that will never mend.

He saw a smile filled with bitter secrets and then one with all the carefree openness of complete delight and wondered which was true and which was false. And if both were true, or neither, could he be any more certain? And what did his certainty matter now anyway, when it simply served to fuel his doubts.

Of one thing, he was fairly certain thanks to Leliana’s diligent research--she would not be here. Outside of appearances in church, for the past five years Adelina Trevelyan was rarely seen out in society. Disappointment settled into his bones like an ache. Maker, how little he wanted to think about what that meant.

“As much a fool as I ever was,” he muttered aloud.

There was some commotion in the ballroom and he turned around to see that the cigar-smoking man of Cassandra’s newly-formed acquaintance was making some sort of announcement. Cullen caught out the words ‘mystery composer’ and noticed that the dancing had ceased. Without couples to block them, the musicians were now on full display to the crowd, elevated as they were on an ornamental sort of stage situated at the back of room.

He could have missed the teyrn’s grand introduction and still have known that some of those pages on the stands were warped by water, some still bore wrinkles and dirt and his own invisible thumbprints. He heard music falling from above, notes ringing down from the stars like motes in the moonlight.

As bows touched down onto strings, a low resonating quaver rippled through him. Someone had told him once that there were sounds pitched too low for humans to hear; sounds that still registered on an innate level of awareness to leave men overwhelmed in the deep bellows of awe and terror. He wondered now if it was fear that struck him or something else, something unknowable and vast; the clockwork turn of the universe’s jeweled moments spinning together, guided by fate.

He searched the crowd, conviction guiding him through silk flounces and cascades of lace.

“That’s the one I told you about. Magic hand from the dalish curse,” a man beside him attempted to whisper, too full of whiskey to manage anything lower than a bellow. Cullen could smell the malted waft of the alcohol curling in the air around him.

 “A curse? Oh, how droll.“

A hand clamped down on his arm and for a moment, he recalled a crowded square, a cheering mob, a whisper of lace in his palm and a hand dwarfed in his own.

Looking down, the memory fractured.

“My, my, Captain Rutherford, you slipped off for a moment there.”

It was the wife of the fellow who loved to hunt, and the look she was giving him churned uneasily in his stomach. Her fingers worked small circles into his wrist over the fabric of his tuxedo jacket. “Did you care to dance? Or...we could go somewhere more private perhaps?”

“No, thank you, I don’t care to dance,” Cullen said, his automatic response tripping off his tongue blithely and he cursed himself for it, “that is, I don’t--”

Her hand jerked away and there was an indignant shriek.

“Oh, my dear lady, I am so very sorry, please allow me to assist,” a man was saying, whipping out a square of turquoise silk and dabbing at the spreading red stain at her sleeve.

“No, no, leave it be, you’re only rubbing it into the fabric!” she waved his hands away and darted off; likely in the direction of the powder rooms.

“Terribly clumsy of me,” the man said, eyes dancing too merrily to convey any remorse, “I seem to have robbed you of your company.”

“And I can’t thank you enough for it,” Cullen said, relief washing over him.

Laughing, the man extended out the hand not currently clutching an empty glass of wine. “Yes, I had an impression you wouldn’t mind. Pavus. Dorian Pavus.”

Comprehension dawned and seeing it, the man’s smile only widened. “I see my reputation proceeds me. Reputations like mine and yours tend to do that, you know.”

Weeks had passed since his last dose, but the air did feel different to Cullen. Sharper, thinner. It cloaked the other man like mist burning off the harbor. But somehow, more prominent than the aura that shouted ‘mage’ to anyone listening, was the unmistakable ease in his posture that indicated a total sureness of his surroundings. He wore a tuxedo as if he had been born in one and while Josephine’s orders had spared no expense for Cullen’s new wardrobe, he now felt very shabby in comparison.

“May I give you a few pieces of friendly advice?”

Without waiting for an answer, the man continued on with the correct assumption that Cullen needed to hear it regardless of whether or not he actually wanted to, “You have to be wary of the married ones--they’re the only people here who can do anything the slightest bit enjoyable. And they rather take advantage of it.”

He cast a meaningful glance around and Cullen noticed more than one bold appraisal from the crowd.

“Find a nice young lady--or gentleman if your tastes run in that direction--to fill up your dance card. They aren’t allowed to have any fun so there’s no pressure at all.”

Cullen started, baffled in the face of such focused charm. “I don’t actually intend to dance, if I can help it.”

Dorian Pavus chuckled at that, his waxed moustache tipping up at a corner. “I’m afraid it is an inevitability...not unlike death,” he smirked, “If you do not dance here, you will be spending the rest of the night as you just were--fending off unwanted advances. And that does grow so tiresome for the arms.”

Setting his empty glass down on a passing tray, he looked Cullen over and made a ‘tsking’ sound, “I can’t walk away now, it would be tantamount to abandoning you to a pack of ravenous wolves. “

He searched the crowd and spotting someone, said, “Ah, the perfect solution approaches.”

His perfect solution appeared from the crowd and Dorian reached forward to take her gently by the wrist. “Adelina, dance the next with this poor fellow. The hens have been at him and if we leave him to them, he’ll be pecked clean.”

In the light of the chandeliers, her hair gleamed in ruddy currents. It was up entirely now, intricately coiled, no free tendrils to haze around her face like a halo. Cullen had thought her pretty before but she looked far more than just pretty at that moment; eyes bright, lips full and curving upwards as if she was just about to laugh. As she looked from Dorian to him, that smile faltered.

“Oh,” she said, lips parting for a moment as if she were about to say more. Finding nothing, she simply pursed them together and smiled in a way that did not reach her eyes. Looking between them, she settled on Dorian. “Dorian, I don’t think he wishes to dance...”

“Nonsense,” Dorian said, grinning now in the face of their awkward silence. “Just the one dance to get him away from their clutches. One dance never hurt anyone.”

The two of them were neatly trapped into polite acceptance and by the smirk, he could tell that Dorian was well aware of it. The man seemed immensely pleased with himself for some reason Cullen could not fathom. Adelina Trevelyan twisted her fingers together and Cullen saw a piece of her tortured dance card peeking through her fingertips.

The awkwardness of the moment only grew greater with every passing second and as a piece of pink card fluttered down to the hem of her gown, Cullen had decided he’d had enough. Hang it all, they couldn’t exactly stand here this way forever could they? Surely a dance could be no more painful.

“It would be my pleasure,” he offered, extending out his arm for her to take.

Her eyes drew up, searching his face, and after a second of hesitation, she accepted it.

The air evaporated in his lungs. Taking a sharp breath, he managed to walk towards the other dancers without incident, weaving through bodies, her arm linked in his.

As they turned to each other, cream chiffon fluttered over the curve of her shoulder. Along her tightly fitted bodice, leaves of ivy had been embroidered into a filigree of green and gold vines. At a glance, it looked like there was no fabric at all, just artful twists of vine curling over bare skin. Cullen swallowed, mouth run dry, and followed the ivy curve of her to span a hand over the line of buttons at her back. Her waist was so very small, he marveled as she stepped closer. Beneath his thumb rose a ridge of her corset and he wondered how it was possible to breathe cinched in so tightly, if perhaps that was the reason her breath was coming so fast and shallow. Immediately following that thought was one of laces coming loose in his hands, fabric parting away from warm skin so that she could take a breath.

Maker, what had he gotten himself into?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finallly, the ball! I now feel justified for hours of dress research (which I promptly disregarded for the most part). The 1900's-1915's was not a very fashion-cohesive era, so I've decided to leave Ostwick back in the early-era of fashion with the hourglass silhouette. it's supposed to be a bit backwater anyway and I just fell in love with the House of Worth gown designs so I'll pretty much justify that any way I can. 
> 
> I'm also changing the rating on this just to be safe for some plot points that might make their way in at later points.
> 
> Thank you so much for your patience and kind words! I know the process of keeping up with a longfic is frustrating and I appreciate everyone who takes the time to read this. You beautiful, glowing, sun goddesses.


	15. The Dance Partners

Her corset was too damned tight. And somehow beneath the steel stays, she could feel his hand pressing against her back like a brand against bare skin. Distracting was what it was. Particularly, the imprint of his thumb against her spine. Adelina bit down hard on the inside of her cheek in a desperate bid for focus; she  could not afford to be distracted when one misstep could send her straight through the doors of the sanatorium. Fear mingled up with anger and both seethed in her veins, curdling blood. In her heart she felt them churn, thick as poison.

Drawing in a deep, shuddering breath that left her chest heaving against her bodice, Adelina plastered on an insipid smile. The last of the schottische faded away--a lucky thing, all that leaping and hopping around was a poor combination with nerves. They waited in the periphery for the musicians to strike up the next song.

“I'm...not very good at this,” he admitted suddenly, so apologetic and sincere she forgot why he was there in the first place and everything that meant. Without a thought,  she gripped his hand to reassure him; a residual instinct after her many attempts to teach Krem a redowa  while several glasses into an Antivan brandy.

“No matter,” she told him, “I have very durable toes.”

She tapped the toe of her slipper on the floor to prove the point.

Cullen laughed, a sharp chuckle that seemed to take him by surprise.  He had such a solemn earnestness about him--something in his eyes--that his laugh caught her off-guard much in the same way his confession had. Before she could slip back behind the safe veneer of vacant politeness, the music resumed and she was grasping his upper arm as he led them into the press.

His admission was not a show at modesty--he left too much space between them to avoid her feet and while he moved with agility, there wasn’t much grace to it. Across his face was an expression of such intense focus, she could practically hear his thoughts count out the triple meter.

The man moved like a plank of wood. Beneath her hand, his upper arm tensed and the rigid line of his shoulders stiffened up even more beneath his jacket when they circled near the onlookers. Whispers followed them back to the center, snatches of gossip carrying over the sound of violins. More than once, she heard his name  and his hand seemed to flinch around hers with every utterance.

“We owe you a thanks, it seems,” she offered, immediately wishing she had said nothing at all. Let him be miserable, why should she care? Why should she try to help the man trying to lock her away?

His gaze drifted down from the spot on her forehead he’d been intently staring at with a look of pained forbearance, “Pardon?”

Andraste’s teeth, curse her bleeding heart. It was too late to turn back (it wasn’t) so she continued on, conversationally, “It’s been some time since we’ve had any new rumors to circulate. You’ve single-handedly saved this entire ballroom from a dozen identical conversations about the price of lace,” she made a face, “Or, Maker-forbid, the weather.”

"Im so pleased to be of service,” he said, voice deadpan but then curious when he followed with, “What...sort of rumors exactly?”

A smile bubbled up to her lips and she dropped her voice in a play at conspiracy, “Scandalous ones. Tell me, how fares your illegitimate horde of children in Denerim? Is their starlet mother quite recovered from so many pregnancies in the span of one year?”

Laughter rumbled through his chest and thrilled under her fingertips. He played along. “Ah...all in excellent health according to their letters.”

“Writing already? Accomplished infants, Ms. Elissa must be devoted to their education. How does she manage between filming all those moving pictures?”

“With the help of her co-star, I expect?" he mused.

His steps grew more fluid and he stepped in much closer in to hear her better over the orchestra. She could smell hints of shaving cream and soap, fresh beneath all the cloying perfume. The impulse to bury her face into the starched white of his collar tingled through her.  

Adelina found herself gripping his arm tighter and it took a force of will to relax her fingers, “Mr….ah, Mr. Theirin? That’s kind of him.”

Her throat had gone suddenly dry in the force of his genuine amusement.

“Well, we are apparently very close friends.” Cullen answered as his hand at her back communicated the next turn. “At least according to everyone who has asked me to procure autographs despite the fact that I had nothing to do with the film.”

“Beyond being the subject matter?” she asked him, noting the flicker of frustration in his brow.

“Yes.” His smile returned, slow and warm with humor. "Beyond that.”

She was forced to amend her previous estimation of his dancing. She now had no trouble matching him step for step, despite his taller frame. It was effortless, familiar-- the glide and sway of their movement swept up in the cresting glissandoes of the violins. Her body responded easily to the subtle changes in pressure from his hands, her steps quickening as he led her closer to the perimeter of the parquet where there was more room for movement.

Warm air wound fast fingers through tendrils of hair escaping pins as he spun her through the dazzling kaleidoscope shift of colors and shapes. A click of the glass disc, and the glitter of shimmering satins pinwheeled around. It made her dizzy and giddy all at once and she was tempted to fall backwards and watch the room unfurl like bright ribbon.

Cullen drew her closer, close enough that his breath gusted over her temple, fast and uneven. His eyes were fathomless, dark, and suddenly she felt as if she were tipping forward instead of back. Not magnetism, but gravity--an inexorable pull towards the space bound up between them until she was falling, drifting down in slow, spinning turns towards lambent gold and the scent of shaving cream.

Someone was shrieking.

The world lurched and straightened in the span of a second. She wrenched away. Maker, she recognized that voice. Fear clutched her chest and the sheen of perspiration that had gathered under her corset turned icy. She nearly tripped in her hurry to get to Flora.

The crowd suddenly recoiled, forming a path to the punch table where Adelina could see her sister and mother whirling around in frantic circles, pulling at their gowns. But no one was looking at them, everyone was looking looking down at the floor just in front of her. Adelina caught a glimpse of several fluffy tails as the animals lopped past her slippers and towards the open archways leading out to the gardens.

“Get it off me!” her mother shrieked, “I can feel it, I’m certain it’s still there.”

Adelina rushed forward, stilling their hands with her own, “They’re gone, they ran out to the gardens.”

Flora looked about ready to burst into tears from humiliation, “Lena, it just...I just suddenly felt little claws on my ankle and...oh, everyone is staring at us.”

With remarkable alacrity, her mother gathered the scraps of her composure into a shroud of haughty indignation. Unbeknownst to her, the elaborate coiffure had dropped inky raven’s feathers everywhere and their quills clung and stuck out of her lace at odd angles. She looked like a plucked chicken; a plucked chicken capable of staring down its nose as if it were everyone else who looked ridiculous, “If our kind host could perhaps close the doors to the gardens so that vermin do not crawl about the refreshments.”

Adelina did not say that fennecs were hardly a common garden pest. Rather, she drew Flora’s trembling hands into her own and searched the room for Dorian after their mother marched off towards the powder room. He could dance the next and take her sister’s mind off her mortification while Adelina hunted out the person responsible.

 _Sera._ Of course it was Sera and Adelina was fuming, half at herself for believing Sera would keep the promise to begin with.

“Is everything alright?” a voice inquired at her elbow and Adelina spun, nearly yanking her sister’s satin glove right off in the process, “Just some trouble with the local wildlife.”

 _With the local madwoman_ she thought venomously.

“Oh, Mr. Rutherford, we have not yet been introduced.” Flora leaned forward.  “You are quite the dancer.”

Cullen’s hand went to his neck as if to loosen the linen tie at his throat, but then dropped away. “I thank you, but all the credit belongs to your sister.”

Flora was all breathy sweetness and wide-eyes. Out of all of them, she looked the youngest--doll-like with delicate dusky features and a way of carrying herself that seemed to convey fragility. Those soft eyes batting long, fluttery lashes made it hard to tell her no and most gave up the effort before even really trying. An irrational splinter of jealousy burrowed beneath her skin.

“Oh yes, Adelina is a lovely dancer.” Flora beamed. “She always danced the lead when we learned as children, I’ve yet to find a partner equal to my sister.”

Heartily ashamed now over her ridiculous envy, Adelina decided it was best she find Sera before the woman could start any more wildlife incidents. Or perhaps she just wanted to get as far away from the ballroom as physically possible, “Mr. Rutherford far exceeds my skills as a leading man I’m happy to say.”

She didn’t attempt to trap him into another dance, but hopefully Flora could wile one from him without much pain endured on his part. Her ‘hopefully’ felt shallow and false-bottomed but Adelina ignored that. “I must find Dorian. He seems to have vanished and I have the next with him.”

“Oh yes." Her sister nudged her arm, cheeky thing. “Perhaps he is in the gardens.”

Ignoring the obvious innuendo, she said, “Yes, I think he might be.”

* * *

She hadn’t gotten three steps into the hedges before a hand reached out and pulled her back into a leafy alcove shaped by the gardeners.

“Did it work?”

Fingers were snatching at her left glove and Adelina tugged her hand away, “Did what work?”

Sera gave her a look like she was an idiot, “The kiss. I know he probably wasn’t a prince or nothin’ but he kind of looked the part and I figured that was good enough innit? Like the curse is going to know better?”

Exasperated, she asked, “Kiss, what are you talking about? What kiss?”

Now Sera gave her a look that put the first to shame. It implied newer, greater levels of idiocy never before dreamed possible by mankind, “You daft tit, you were just dancing with him weren’t you? Looking sloshed, the both of you, ugh.” her short nose wrinkled up with her disgust, “Just rip off your clothes already and get it over with, I say.”

Adelina shook her head. “I didn’t kiss him and we were not...that’s not what was…”

“Well why the hell not?” Sera demanded, furious, “I went through all that trouble and you just waste it? See if I do you any more favors.”

“I can do without your favors,” Adelina snapped back. "How about we settle for keeping promises?”

Blonde eyebrows furrowed down. “Promise, what promise?”

“You agreed, no animals after the last time.”

“Fennecs are different,” Sera insisted, “bigger, hard to step on and make a mess. ‘Sides, I never said no animals, just not that animal in particular.”

That could have been possible, in truth Adelina could not recall the exact wording of their agreement. She just remembered how relieved she had been that it wasn’t a wasp’s nest again. With Sera, it could always be worse, she had learned to take her victories where she could.

“Do you think I should’ve gone with the nug under the punch table instead?”

Adelina threw her hands up. “Sera, don’t you think all this is a bit childish at this point?”

Hurt flashed up and there was a watery gleam to her eyes offset by the livid twist of her lips. “Piss off yeah? You thought it was funny before when you stopped bothering with this shite,” she gestured wildly to indicate Adelina’s gown before swiping at her eyes.

She was furious, nothing made Sera more furious than crying. “Well whatever alright? Wear your stupid clothes and dance with your stupid not-prince and eat your stupid tiny cakes...why are they so tiny anyhow?.”

All at once, she was tired of being the reasonable one, the one calming Sera’s quick trigger temper. The strain of the night left her own frayed, ready to snap. “You think I want to be here Sera? He’s here with a Seeker and they’ve been all over town asking about me. They think…”

She couldn’t say it. Not when her fist was sputtering, throwing off flashes of green that flickered off the hedges. Slamming a wall down on the burst of emotion, she turned around to leave.

A sound like a sigh came from the other side of the hedge. No, more like a moan, a low intake of wheezing breath that rattled unnervingly. Adelina frowned, glancing at Sera who had heard it too.

Wordlessly, they set off in the direction of the noise, following the line of the hedge around until they came across a man slumped up against the boxwood. His head lolled forward to rest his chin on his chest.

Adelina drew forward but recoiled away when moonlight caught his profile. He looked withered, a husk of skin fixed into an leathery mask of horror. From behind him, shadows coalesced, the dark undersides of the leaves merging together into a roiling mass like an ink stain in the moonlight.

Sera wasted no time, leaping forward and slashing at the coiling black with the knife from her belt. But it didn’t seem to do anything, shadow simply dissolved around the blade and then solidified right beside her. A clawed hand shot out to grab her and she ducked away just in time, leaving behind a fistful of blonde strands.

Adelina’s hand went to her hips but her pistol was at home, as was the knife she usually kept strapped to her leg.

The smart thing to do would be to run and find help but she couldn’t just leave Sera behind. Indecision locked her limbs and her thoughts spun out uselessly as Sera twisted around to slice a jagged gash into the creature’s outstretched arm.

“What are you doing?” Sera cried out, “Don’t just stand there!”

She couldn’t...what was wrong with her, why couldn’t she do anything? She felt weak and confused. Could the demon be doing this to her?

The demon lunged forward and this time, Sera faltered. It knocked her back, hurling her into a hedge. The knife flew from her hands and skittered over the gravel towards Adelina.

She saw the moonlight catch on metal, flaring impossibly bright, searing through her confusion. Snapping into motion, she grabbed it and buried it into the tattered cowl at the back of the demon’s head as it glided towards Sera. Keeping her grip, she pulled it out in time to avoid the swing of claws as the thing turned on her instead.

The knife lashed forward again, shielding her as claws swung at her a second time. But something was wrong again, her arm suddenly gave out, crumpling against the force instead of holding. Deep cuts raked along her trembling wrist as it grabbed her just as her legs lost their strength.

“Fucking blighter.” Sera shouted, and Adelina was released with a jerk.

Gravel dug into her lacerated wrist but the pain was nothing to the fire in her left hand. Light pulsed, ripping through her arm as the air around them changed.  Whispers crowded in her ears, a low murmur growing louder and louder, a thousand voices pushing through a thinning membrane.  She tried to hum but the thin waver was lost in the furor and then she gave up and tried to scream instead. But the voices were too loud and everything felt taut, stretched, ready to rip.

There was a burst of light and the smell of noxious things burning. Someone grabbed her and hauled her up, “You need to leave. Now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've spent all week doing western blots and I think I'm starting to go a little insane from it. The problem with this fic is that I really love the setting and half what I want to put in never makes it in. BUT I have started working on a short (1-3 chapters max) spin-off Cousland/Alistair fic that takes place concurrently. Working on it verryyy slowly, but I'm already in love with the idea. Early film was NUTS, these women did their own stunts a lot of the time (or their little brothers in wigs did, haha). Lilian Gish let them float her down a river! Anyway, thank you so much for the comments, kudos and if anyone would like to drop by on Tumblr, you can find me under Dulcydine. I do manage to get to it most days :)


	16. The Victim and the Suspect

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to thank Kcevansme for beta-reading this chapter. She's amazing and I highly recommend anything she writes. This chapter does includes some violent depictions. Please let me know if they deserve a better warning, I will do it in a second.

He found Cassandra kneeling by a corpse.

“The shade?” Cullen asked, already knowing the answer. She nodded.

“That makes three then.” This man and the couple near the back of the garden, their clothing rucked up over dessicated skin--an obvious indication as to why they had been in the gardens alone in the first place. High price to pay for privacy.

All died without signs of struggle, faces twisted in horror, skin paper dry. Quite the different scene from the docks--almost peaceful in comparison but no less horrifying. It would seem that The Hand was determined to add variety to their reign of terror.

“Voracious appetite, to drain three people so completely in such a short time. ” Cassandra nudged the man’s lapel gingerly, taking care not to disturb the portion of the body that had been burned. Mage fire, Cullen was certain of it. Normal flame would not have reduced bone to ash and even if it had, only fine control could have extinguished it before the whole papery husk went up like kindling.

She stood, brushing off her trousers and plucked a piece of paper from her jacket pocket for his benefit. Another flyer, inked with nothing but the shape of a hand.

“What of the guests?” she asked after he looked it over.

“The teyrn has closed up the ballroom so that the fire can be attended to. Some are leaving but we’ve been able to avoid a panic...”

Cullen paused, frowning. For a group of people in such close proximity to an explosive inferno, they had all been remarkably calm about the situation. Most simply fretted over the early termination of the gala and no matter how strongly Cullen and Josephine attempted to dissuade the teyrn otherwise, the man refused to place the safety of his guests above the social success of the event. He also held them personally responsible for the cancellation of the midnight fireworks.

“Nobility is stupid,” Cassandra said, reading the turn of his mind in the twist of his lips. “The ballroom itself could be on fire and they would stand around to complain that it is hot.”

They both glanced towards the smoldering crater etched out into the hedge maze. The fire had cut clean, precise lines and if it weren’t for the blackened and smoldering edges, it would have looked like the work of a mad gardener.

“Where is Solas?” she wondered aloud, “I’ve seen no sign of him through all this.”

“You’re looking at it,” a voice cut in. “Who do you think did all this? I thought something flashy would clear the manor but it appears I’ve overestimated the lure of the punch.”

Solas stepped from the shadows, soot staining his white tie and vest. “Fortunately for them, it was just the one. I’ve found no others lurking in the area.”

Cassandra’s lip curled upwards. "Idiots.”

Moonlight threw silver sparks off the top of the two pointed ears of his walking stick and Cullen asked how Solas had come across the shade in the first place.

“By luck entirely.” He made a passing effort to swipe the remnants of burnt greenery from his jacket. “Its efforts were focused on its victim, I attacked before it had any opportunity to exert a weakening effect on my mind and body.”

“Did you see who summoned it?” Cassandra asked, voice eager.

He mused over the question, “Seeker, you may recall that shades possess the capacity to manifest without a summoning ritual.”

“If it had manifested without help, it would have been much weaker. Relied on draining psyches-- seeding fear and confusion rather than…” she trailed off, looking over the corpse once more. “It was summoned. I’m certain of it. ”

Her explanation seemed to amuse the elf. Perhaps it struck him as unnecessary, Solas had always exhibited a thorough knowledge of the denizens of the Fade. “I saw no one. I imagine whoever was responsible for its sudden appearance did not stay long to observe their handiwork.”

Cassandra spun on him, and Cullen had the discomforting feeling of being held down with forceps and pinned to cardboard like an insect for display. “She was dancing with you before, was there any sign that she had just come from the gardens?”

Solas sighed. “Seeker, really, must every explanation come back to a woman without any hint of magical ability?”

Cassandra ignored him, focusing on Cullen.  “Well?” she pressed.

Cullen  felt like a child with the desire to squirm away. “Uhm...such as?”

“Was she covered in the remains of hedges?” Solas supplied, the wry condescension unwavering in the face of the glare Cassandra shot him.

She turned back to Cullen. “I don’t know...something, _anything_.”

“The scent of night and nefarious deeds clinging to her bodice perhaps," Solas quipped.

Unbidden, his mind supplied him with the memory of pine resin and caramels underneath all the cloying rose and lavender; intoxicating as punch and half as sweet. He felt warm--a perspiring, febrile sort of warmth trailing fire in his veins.

“Have you been drinking?” Cassandra accused, and Cullen’s chin jerked to retort when he realized the question was directed to Solas, “I can’t understand why you aren’t taking this seriously.”

“Useless speculation? I can’t understand why you do.”

“Perhaps we should go back inside and find her instead of arguing out in the gardens.” Cullen cut in, recognizing that this could go on for much, much longer given the set of Cassandra’s jaw and the gleam in Solas’ eye.

“Very practical, Captain.” Solas commended him.1 “But you’ll excuse me if I don’t join you. I’m no longer suitably attired and I think I’ve outlived my usefulness for the night.”

Cassandra made a sound of displeasure and stomped back towards the manor, leaving sounds of assaulted herbivory in her wake.

Solas tipped him the self-satisfied smile of a cat before doffing his hat and departing the other direction.

Cullen knelt down, cap-toed shoes scuffing over the gravel, and plucked a fold of cream cardstock from the man’s jacket pocket where it protruded out. Every line was blank--no hope of finding a partner and making an immediate identification. The thought niggled at him. In death, anonymity was only an insult.

He tucked the card back and made to stand when a smear of shadow curving over gravel caught the light of the surviving garden lanterns. Taking off his white glove and pressing his hand to the ground, he found that it was wet but growing tacky. Darkness came away, staining his fingertips.

Blood.

Magic still clung to the air, a lingering metallic bite. Cullen nearly stumbled over as the ground canted beneath him. He could hear them, screaming in their beds. Linoleum slicked over, smeared with the blood of Uldred’s chosen. Knives pressed into palms, circles of light on the ground.

Cullen forced a deep breath and the screaming stopped mid-note. He took a new inventory of the scene. There were more--inky droplets concealed by poor light and a rough surface.

The dead man had no visible wounds and Cullen suspected that an injury would have pooled over the gravel beneath him and there was nothing but groupings of splatters scattered over the pathway. From Solas’ description of his encounter with the shade, the blood couldn’t have been his: he had destroyed the thing without a fight. Which left someone else, someone who had been there before the attacks began, before Solas arrived to destroy the shade. The one who summoned the shade in the first place.

Cullen frowned, a queasy knot working its way through his stomach.  He blamed the punch and ignored it. The blood trailed around towards the front of the house where the path gave way to the drive. Carriages and automobiles lined the gravel and he finally lost it between the bulk of a metal bumper and the looming shadow of nearby wheel.

It struck him suddenly as foolish to come alone. He would be powerless against a blood mage. He had nothing but a knife on him and what good would that do against compulsion outside of hastening his demise by his own hand?

“We cannot leave now, I have the next waltz with William Penrose! He was so insistent.”

“Mama insisted I could not go alone. And William Penrose is a cretin. You should stay away from him.”

Cullen recognized that voice, he perfectly recalled the velvet sound of it when she laughed. When they were dancing, it was all he could think of--how much he liked her laugh, how the air seemed brighter as the room revolved around them in a sweeping nimbus of light and color and sound.

But that was probably an effect of the punch--spiked harder than he originally thought. Cullen frowned, feeling a heady rush ebbing in his limbs. Or was it spiked at all?

“He’s perfectly lovely,” said the other woman. “To me at least.”

He rounded the corner around the carriage and a pair of wide, dark eyes fastened on him with triumph, “Oh, Captain Rutherford! Perhaps you can talk some sense into my sister. It is the most ridiculous thing to leave before midnight. There will be fireworks I’ve heard!”

Before he realized it, she was taking his arm and leading him towards the side of the carriage as if his proximity would be persuasive enough.

Adelina Trevelyan stood in the shadow cast by the carriage. She looked insubstantial, a pale vision juxtaposed against the night. His thumbs remembered the feel of buttons and the steel ridge of a stay, moving with every rapid exhale. He wanted to reach out and pull her close, sure she would only shimmer away and leave his hands to their pale memories.  Memories they had no business keeping--but that fact escaped the warm thrill running over his palms.

“Captain. Captain, are you alright?” Flora asked him.

“Yes.” _No._ He shook his head as if dazed and looked to Adelina, who was regarding him with a strange expression. One arm was locked behind her back and the other reached behind to grab it. In her eyes was an unspoken plea. For what? For him to leave? To convince her sister to leave her be?

“I don’t think it my place to intervene…” he trailed off.

“But you must!”

When she spoke, her hands fluttered around with excitement. Something about the open delight in the motions reminded him of Rosalie. Of course, he hadn’t seen Rosalie in years...perhaps that had changed. He desperately hoped not.

“...another dance perhaps?” she had continued on, oblivious to his lapse in attention. “Since you only danced once, I can’t even fathom…”

There were muffled sounds from the bushes lining the drive and they quivered as if ruffled by a nonexistent breeze. Cullen glanced over but they were still again and he wondered if they had moved at all or if it had just been his imagination.

“Flora, I’m sure he has other things to see to,” Adelina cut in.

Her voice was strange, drawn taut and on the verge of snapping. Cullen stopped looking at the bushes and noticed that she seemed out of breath, her hair windblown. A section of embroidered ivy had ripped away from her bodice and there, nestled against the fabric gathered at her waist and half hidden by the dim, was a dark smear crusting over chiffon.

He heard a high electric whine piercing the air and Cassandra’s voice asking him for something, _anything_. She was so sure, more certain than any of them that somewhere at the center of The Hand’s actions was Adelina Trevelyan. Had she had been right, all along?

“You’re injured.”

Under the ringing, needle thin and razor sharp, Cullen barely recognized his own voice masked over with clinical detachment. It’d been so long since he’d practiced as a physician and yet, that clipped, almost bored note rang perfect. It was like riding a bicycle, apparently.

She tried protesting, “It’s nothing, I fell in the gardens is all--”

Cullen narrowed his eyes at her and spoke to her sister, “Ms. Floralina, if you’ll excuse us. I’ll attend to your sister’s injury.”

It was not a request. Confused by his sudden brusqueness, she simply nodded mutely, heels crunching over the gravel as she walked back to the manor. Adelina was not confused, she watched him carefully before bringing her hands up for his inspection with a resignation that said she expected this. Not to be caught, surely. Cullen disregarded his curiosity. It hardly mattered now.

Her right glove was mangled, shredded across the wrist where the satin was dull brown and rumpled stiffly over the knife wounds. But it was otherwise pristine in the poor light. Cullen pressed his thumbs down the untouched fabric over her palms. No wince, no raised ridge of a cut or a bandage.

She didn’t need a cursed hand to summon a demon; she just needed a mage and the willing gift of her blood. But it was shockingly idiotic for her to let whatever blood mage she was in league with to cut her so visibly--where anyone could see. He thought that the  wounds at her wrist were secondary, but it appeared not. Why didn’t she take off the glove first, or use a bandage? At least a cursory attempt at concealing it.

He searched her face. She met his gaze and did not falter, her chin stubborn. When he released her left hand and touched his bare fingers to her injured arm, she gave a surprised little jolt and faltered. _Guilt_. Cullen grit his teeth, a flicker of anger emerging from the anesthetic chill enveloping him. He was angry with her then for wavering, confirming his worst suspicions. Cassandra had been right. And then the heat of his anger was gone, like the prick of a needle lost in an amylocaine sea.

“I’m going to remove your glove.” Cullen informed her and she nodded her assent.

He slid his fingers between the satin coming to an end just above her elbow and began slipping buttons from their hooks. Cullen worked his way down, pausing at her wrist where she had pressed the fabric against the cuts in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Now that the blood was congealed, the glove was stuck fast. Prying it up required some delicacy and despite his efforts, it still elicited a sharp intake of breath from her. Fingers flexed, fisting up against his forearm as the glove finally came away entirely.

He saw immediately that the cuts were too wide and too shallow for a sharp edge--jagged furrows where he expected clean lines. They weren’t serious, too shallow to do anything but bleed profusely. The whole area of her wrist was stippled red where bruises would form and her fingernails were ragged, some snapped off below the quick and rimmed with a thin line of blood. Nothing indicated passive compliance to a blood magic ritual. Strange.

A laugh carried in the night, along with the distant sounds of voices drawing nearer. Adelina sprang into action, pulling him back against the hedge, further into the shadows. She was very close, her arm still cradled in his hands. To look at him, she had to tip her head back. To the casual observer, they would have looked like lovers avoiding public scrutiny. The thought disturbed him.

“A fall in the gardens you said.” He continued to hold her wrist, her injuries saying what he did not voice aloud--that she was lying.

“I was startled.”

"These look like claw marks." If he were more skilled with the art of lying and those who practiced it, he might have been able to make the statement sound like more than an outright accusation. But he couldn't dance around it with real skill, intimating at what they both knew but would not say. Perhaps Cassandra would have been better; Josephine certainly, but neither of them were here and his fumbling attempts would have to serve. "What _exactly_ were you doing in the garden?"

Something shifted in her face, softness giving way to sharper planes. Her voice was careful but he had the impression she wanted to slap him by the way her fingers flexed tight against his hand. 

“You think I had something to do with what happened tonight,” she said, "because of the curse? All the rumors?" 

Cullen laughed and it was bitter and short. Who needed fairytales when blood magic still hung heavy in the air and summoned demons prowled the city? Dalish curses belonged in the storybooks where they couldn't justify alienage liquidations and slaughter at the hands of a vengeful mob. There was a knot stabbing into his lungs like a broken rib and it throbbed fiercely.

"I hardly believe in fairytale curses."

Her polite expression had faltered entirely, crumpled up in the confusion furrowing between her brows. He watched it vanish with some satisfaction. But the feeling reverberated through him like a stone clattering against the walls of a vast, hollow pit; giving off strange echoes of conflicting emotion. "Then--"

Cullen cleared his throat in a bid for composure. Her reaction didn't make sense. Her wounds didn't make sense. But there was something she wasn't saying and he was quickly becoming frustrated with his inability to draw it out. “Stop playing games Ms. Trevelyan and just answer the question.”

She was still so close, her arm burning in his grasp, lips pale and voice fierce. “I don’t play games with my life, Mr. Rutherford”

Pulling away, she brushed down the ripped embroidery of her bodice and then drew her shoulders straight, spine rigid. She looked every inch the daughter of a bann: icy and unreachable. “If you wish to formally detain me for questioning, I believe the constable and your Seeker friend are inside enjoying cigars. Until then, I can’t imagine we could have anything worth saying to each other.”

He wanted to speak--do something, anything--but realizations were going off in his mind like a series of charges fused together. His suspicion was crumbling at the foundations. But she was already gone, leaving him to the sick feeling of error settling into his bones.

* * *

 

“She was rather lovely.” Josephine commented softly before slanting her eyes over to him playfully, “You neglected to mention that, Cullen.”

He could do nothing but make a noncommittal sound.

“Why would he? It’s hardly relevant.” Cassandra shifted in the settee, regarding the rest of them with imperious calm.

Josephine merely looked between them and smiled as if she would allow them to maintain their naivete only through her good graces. Cullen said nothing, his fingers twisting around the fob of Hawke’s watch in restless circles. He wanted to snap it in two.

“Oh, stop mulling,” Josephine chided, “It was just a...personal observation.”

His hands stilled but he did not bring his eyes up to look at her, “Perhaps it should stay that way.”

“Have it your way.” Josephine replied, voice forcefully light. At the corner of his eye he saw her take a seat on the settee beside Cassandra; carefully, to avoid spilling her tea. Her shoulders were unnaturally tense. He’d hurt her feelings.

Tired of the tangent, Cassandra returned to the previous point, “If the man was complicit in the property sales, he would hardly confess it.”

Josephine considered that before disregarding it with a shake of her head, “He was far too intoxicated to manage any attempt at duplicity. I think it is safe to assume  bann Trevelyan has no idea about the estate’s finances.”

“The mother?” Cassandra blew the top of her teacup, watching the steam puff away before taking a sip. “Perhaps she handles them.”  
  
“But why would she sign his name?” Solas interjected, irritated that they would miss the obvious, “She would be well within her rights to conduct the business without resorting to forgery.”

The elf then shot Cullen a pointed look and he realized he had been snapping the watch open and closed in rapid succession.

Josephine spoke up, hurt feelings lost in her concern, “Perhaps some tea Cullen?”

He nodded abstractly and got up to pour himself a cup from the hotel cart. As he set the kettle down, a tremor seized his hands and the porcelain came down with a loud clatter that nearly upended the tiny carafe of cream.

“I don’t think I need to voice where my suspicions lead,” Cassandra continued on after an awkward silence filled the room, “It wasn’t the mother or the father and the eldest and third eldest sisters were not living at home at the time. That leaves the other three and from what I’ve seen of Coralina and Floralina Trevelyan, I doubt either would be caught doing sums.”

Josephine shifted on the brocade. “But Coralina is the one who will inherit the estate, you may be underestimating her.”

Cassandra snorted at that. “You met the woman. Her future husband will run the estate, that is what she is counting on. Not everyone is like you Josephine, you cannot assume so.”

Cullen gulped down his tea in one quick motion and felt it searing all the way down.

“I still don’t see why this is cause for suspicion at all.” Solas said. “Complicated property dealings are hardly nefarious for the wealthy.”

All three fell silent, not willing to start the circuit of the argument all over again.

Cullen set his cup back down by the sugar. “My mind is elsewhere, I think I’ll retire to my room.”

“Yes, it’s been a long night,” Josephine commiserated, “but at least the teyrn has vocalized his support in our investigation. The Divine can hardly insist we return now.”

All at once, the room contracted around them into a miserable sphere. Cassandra’s head dipped low over her cup of tea before saying. “She’d have to find the time to do so in the midst of all her evangelising about liquidating the alienages.”

Even Josephine could not find it in herself to smile in the face of that.

* * *

 

He woke suffocating.

Linen and batting pressed against his mouth and Cullen jerked away, his shout dying on his lips with one great drag of air.  He was trapped and his hands shot out, searching the nightstand for his weapon but finding nothing but bottles. He shoved them away and they shattered against each other, white powder blooming up, tinctures splattering.  

They were watching him. He shut his eyes but he could still see them--Beval and Farris and Annalise; all watching him. Accusing him with empty eyes, bones yellow and marked all over with the paired indentations of small incisors. Why didn’t he save them? Why was he still alive while their gnawed bones moldered at the bottom of Lake Calenhad?

His hand burned and Cullen opened his eyes again to see that it was covered in small cuts, the shards of glass embedded within glittering up in the dark. For a moment, he saw eyes instead, a dozen tiny eyes peering up from wounds left by teeth. Crying out, he slammed it against the nightstand and pain flared white and hot against his retinas.

By the time it cleared, he saw that he was alone. There was no one.

He picked all the glass out of his hand with forceps sterilized in the flame of his lighter and bandaged it up hastily while memories whispered from the grates and bed curtains. He had to get out, leave before they dragged him back to linoleum halls smeared over with the rusted stains of his dead friends. It was still a few hours until morning. He could be back before the others woke for breakfast. Cullen grabbed his clothes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the very long delay, I hadn't realized how much time had passed! There was an element of writer's block for this on top of my summer labwork, which involves cadaver dissections and cadaver prep (fun right? haha, it is actually a bit fun but I smell like chemicals every day). Thank you everyone for your patience and for being amazing readers!


	17. The Conspirators

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 9/14: I have made minor edits to this chapter for clarification

The lock was old, with heavy brass cylinders that thunked more than clicked when she rolled the torsion wrench between her fingers and slid the pin into position. Adelina cast a wary glance towards the light and voices escaping out from beneath the door across the hall. She didn’t think it was just her imagination when she heard her name, faint but still audible through the oak panels to the parlor suite.

A swollen wrist and throbbing fingers didn’t make the process faster and she fumbled on the third pin, dropping her pick. At any second, they could all emerge from the room and find her kneeling there in the hall , combing through the carpet and cursing softly under her breath.

Metal brushed against her fingers. She seized it up but went still at the sudden clatter from the occupied room. One silent, pulse-racing moment passed before the conversation resumed--something about the estate.

With a shuddering exhale, she turned back to work on the lock before her luck finally ran out and she was discovered. Her father always said luck ran in streaks. Of course, being a gambler, his views on the topic had translated into debt more than anything. Adelina laughed under her breath but it had the desperate edge of someone with little to laugh about.

Ignoring the pain flaring up in her wrist, she twisted the pick between her fingers as they steadied the torsion wrench. With a clunk, the final pin moved into position. Pocketing her tools in the satin of Lady Thornwick's pilfered-- _borrowed_ \--evening coat, she opened the door and slipped inside the empty room.

It was one of the smaller suites, but still luxurious by Ostwick standards. Judging by the fire glowing in the grate and the crisp folds in the duvet, the maid had already stopped by for the night.

Adelina thumbed through a pile of paperwork scattered across the fold-top desk; the only hint of disorder left behind by the staff, who knew better than to meddle with it.  The folder at the top of the pile was still open. Deciding that snooping was the least of her outstanding crimes for the night, she indulged in her curiosity and flipped through what looked to be bills of sale for parcels of land. She paused over one--the title catching her attention. The land detailed in these papers used to be part of the Trevelyan estate, that is, until she sold it to a railway financier in Kirkwall with her father’s forged signature.

The paper was a value appraisal for the property. She flipped past, seeing more, but none were identical to the appraisals locked in the drawer of her father’s desk. No, these were obtained from banks and brokers she’d never heard of--many based in Kirkwall. Which explained why the values were all wrong, much too high.

She flipped back to the beginning--why were there so many bills of sale? Out of dozens, only three had corresponding matches to the ones in her father’s study bearing his false signature. Why had the land changed hands so much after she sold it? And why were the values doubling, tripling with each consecutive deal?

The door opened. Exhibiting no surprise at the strange woman pawing through his paperwork, the man cast a cursory glance towards her before making his way to the chest of drawers. He began to undo his cufflinks.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of another meeting with Ostwick’s mysterious composer?”

Adelina started. Somehow she did not expect Cullen to disclose _that_ particular detail to his associates. She also did not expect that small betrayal of her trust to hurt in light of his other actions. What else had he told them?

The man was watching her now, with interest. “Ah, you think someone betrayed your secret? There was no need. I will admit my particular fascination with your muse. From what I could gather, it seems to be quite a remarkable spirit.”

Metal clinked down onto the wood and he set to loosening his necktie, eyes still on her. “I suppose you weren’t overtly aware of its presence. I can’t say that is surprising.”

Her muse? A spirit? Adelina frowned, setting that aside to think about later and gestured with the folder still in her hands. “Your research would be more impressive if it were not incorrect.”

“Oh?” he raised an eyebrow. “Where did the spymaster error?”

His unruffled brand of amusement left her feeling wrong-footed, as if she were on uneven ground and about to twist her ankle on the next step. “Well, the appraisals to begin with.”  

“I can assure you those are correct. You may have noticed that there are several, conducted by independent banking institutions that facilitated the later transactions.”

“That’s not possible, I--”   
  
Void take her, when would she stop spilling out her secrets to the first stranger who inquired? Particularly strangers involved in a Chantry investigation. She could not trust him. She knew nothing about him outside of rumors. Most believed he was a personal valet, but being that he was lodged in one of the Golden Rind’s grand suites, Adelina was certain that could not be the case.

Until she knew his motivations, the less she disclosed, the better.

“You said you could help me.” She changed tack. “In the gardens after you saved us by destroying the demon.”

“Yes, unfortunately there wasn’t much time to elaborate then.” Intelligent eyes pierced through her. “I believe I can help you with your so-called curse.”

Hope consumed her; she practically itched with the effort of schooling her features into indifference.  

“Who are you?” she asked him, “are you part of the Seeker’s investigation?”

At any moment, he could alert his colleagues of her presence. Sera’s knife was tucked carefully into Lady Thornwick’s coat but she made no move for it. Threatening a mage with a bit of metal was hardly an effective tactic but she'd have to make due with what was available. She hoped it wouldn't come to that.

“My name is Solas. And I am, in a manner of speaking, although our goals are not unified.”

“And what are your goals?” she asked, careful to keep her voice neutral.

“The truth. The Seeker will not be convinced of your innocence.” Solas brought a hand up to his chin,  considering her for a  moment. “If we can resolve your situation without incident, she will be forced to look for other alternatives.”

“I didn’t think resolving my situation was even possible,” she ventured. Despite Sera’s insistence, Adelina was sure kisses did not work outside of the fairy tales. She had tried it, for one, and while the experience was perfectly lovely, it was nothing miraculous.

“It may not be,” he said. “Too much time may have passed. But if you are willing to try--”

“I am.”

He smiled. It lacked warmth but the confidence in it was reassuring. “Tomorrow then. There is a meadow with a creek running through it, nearly a mile away from your family’s estate. It is the place you were discovered as a child, with the maid.”

Terror slid an icy finger down her spine.

Old wounds seethed in her chest and guilt, ugly and gnarled with the scars of the past, spread up from them to choke her throat. Her fingers flexed forward as if reaching for a hand already grown cold. A steady glow pulsed up beneath them.

“We can’t,” she said, mouth dry,  “it isn’t…”

Adelina paused, searching for a way to describe the magic barrier enclosing the meadow without explicitly disclosing its existence.

“It isn’t accessible.”

“I’m aware of the challenge. I’ve been there.” He examined the silver head of his walking cane before his eyes came up to fix on hers. "But I doubt accessibility will present a problem for you.”

The way he looked at her then, she was certain he knew of the barrier and its sole weakness. How was that possible? There were only two people who could know besides herself and both were dead--one because of her.

Suddenly wary, Adelina eyed him. “I don’t think that is a good idea.”

He nodded, recognizing it for the distrust that it was. It did not seem to offend...if anything he seemed to approve of her skepticism. “By all means, consider your options. But consider them knowing that you have very little time. I expect it won't be long before the Seeker pays you a visit and seizes your family records. It might be best for you if you destroyed them.”

“I have nothing to hide," she said.

Maker, that voice was a perfect mimic of her mother’s. She realized her chin was raised, the stubborn jut of it conveying glacial superiority.

Solas chuckled--so much for Lady Trevelyan’s patented icy glare.  “I hope you realize that doesn’t matter. If anything, your innocence is what makes you unable to perceive exactly how incriminating the truth looks.”

He walked towards her. “Your land was sold at undervalued rates, resold to radicalists in Kirkwall and Ostwick who then resold again it at nearly triple the initial price. Surely you realize how that appears.”

“Undervalued?” she demanded, opening up the folder as if it contained anything that could contradict him, though she already knew it did not.  “I sold it at the appraised value to a legitimate buyer. The deals were brokered by a reputable investor. ”

“Then he has has swindled you,” Solas informed her.

“That can’t be...” she trailed off while her mind goped at the ramifications with fumbling hands.

When she looked up, the room was awash with livid green. She stamped out the emotions so quickly, red afterimages danced in the darkness

“I must go.”

Solas caught her by the wrist and plucked the folder from her hands. “I’m afraid that cannot leave this room.”

A thought occurred to her...she could tell Cullen it was all a misunderstanding, show him the correspondences from her father’s desk. “What if I told your associates the truth?”

Cullen might listen. After all, he hadn’t dragged her off to the sanitorium just yet. For all her false confidence at the gala, she hadn't actually expected him to just let her _leave_ after heavily implying she'd had a hand in the slaughter.

“You cannot trust them.” Solas said, something like regret pent up in his words. “They will never believe you.”

Selfishly, she was relieved. The part of her heart she thought she’d crushed years ago still beat a fierce, wild tempo and the moment Cullen released her cursed hand and kept her injured one, it had deafened her. It was in that moment that she knew, for all her guilt, she would not submit to a cell without a fight. Not after Solas's words in the garden resurrected her forgotten hopes from the ashes of the past.

She pushed out into the hall without another word. It was dark, the servants asleep in their wing of the hotel. By the time she made it out through the kitchens and into the street undetected, Lady Thornwick's valet was hopping around impatiently.

“Where have you been?” he demanded, “I said an hour, no more. What if she wants to leave the gala early and I’m not there? I’ll lose my position faster than you can blink.”

Adelina began to unhook the pearl drops from her ears. Lady Thornwick was always the last to leave any social event. The running joke in Ostwick society was that the woman’s cook was incapable of preparing a morning meal, leaving her mistress to breakfast at other people’s homes.

“If she leaves before ten for the first time in her life, I will find you another position, Jim, I promise you that.”

She extended the earrings out to him. They’d fetch a nice price and they weren’t too fine to arouse the suspicion of theft. “Please,” she said, “I need to get home as quickly as possible.”

Jim huffed and looked askance at her outstretched hand. “Keep your jewelry.”

He opened the door for her. “But tell Red Jenny she owes me.”

* * *

 

 

It was all too easy to break into her father's study undetected. The windows opened directly to the gardens and were closed only by a hook latch easily undone when she slid the pick through to lift it up.

The room was dark and, thankfully, empty. Sometimes her father dozed on the leather couch after his nightcap but tonight there was only an indentation in the tufted cushions and an empty bottle of brandy perched on the armrest.

His vanilla tobacco still lingered in the air; a pleasant specter of happier years, back when she still believed his promises of sobriety, when his excuses still had the shine of truth to them. Adelina shook her head, producing a square of folded leather from the crevice between her gown’s bodice and her corset. Opening it revealed a line of slim metal pieces typically sported by thieves and ne'er–do–wells.

But before she could start on the desk drawer, she heard hushed voices from the garden, growing louder. People were coming. She ducked down beneath the window sill to avoid being seen in the moonlight cutting rectangles of silver onto the plush carpet.

“I hardly have a choice, do I Rilienus?”

Adelina peeked over the sill and saw Dorian, looking at his companion with a pained expression. Rilienus Herathinos. Married and thus safe from her mother’s matchmaking schemes. Initially Adelina had thought he was as disdainful as the rest of them but she’d since come to think that he was simply overfond of brooding. Dorian had described him only as ‘a decent sort, too concerned with doing the right thing to bother being interesting’. She hadn’t the impression that they got on very well, the other man was so utterly serious, but it would seem she had been wrong.

Rilienus raked a hand through his hair, ruining the sleek waves set in pomade. She couldn’t see his face but she heard the wild sound of disbelief from him--a startling show of emotion from the man who spent so much time studiously ignoring everyone around him, “You have a choice, you only refuse to see it!”

Dorian’s hand fluttered up between them as if to smooth the mussed hair back down again. “I was always a little short-sighted,” he joked but the charm of it fell flat and he let his hand fall away.

Rilienus stalked over to the orange tree shading the windows of the study. Adelina ducked back down out of sight and heard him ask, “What of Livia?”

“Your sister has and will always manage exceedingly well.” Dorian laughed, his amusement genuine enough, “besides, you know very well that we despise each other.”

There was a sound in the gravel of shoes pivoting suddenly, “You think this is noble, because it is foolish?  You've taken it into your head that this is the right thing but believe me Dorian, this is no kindness. It will ruin you.”

“Ah.” Dorian said after a silent moment stretched beyond bearing. Tension thrummed between his words, undermining his attempt at lightness, “I appreciate your concern old chap but social ruin is infinitely preferable to the current state of things."

"So this is about--" Rilienus started, then said tenderly, "You know that Livia does not care so long as we are discreet.”

Adelina shifted back, now heartily ashamed for intruding on their privacy. Her skirts puffed out around her in a stiff halo and as she moved, the layers of chiffon jostled a claw-footed floor lamp. Shooting out a hand to steady it, she winced as the crystal bits dangling from the shade clinked together.

“It’s about the sound slumber of a man without the burden of his conscience haunting his dreams.” Dorian said and she breathed a sigh of relief that they did not seem to hear her, “Do you wish me to belabor my motivations further? I’m growing rather tired of all the repetition.”

While she hadn’t known Dorian very long, she was already familiar with the cutting playfulness of his scorn. Whatever Rilienus’s response was to it, she could not see. She could only hear the sound of footsteps receding into the night followed by silence.

After a beat, Dorian spoke aloud to the empty garden, “Imagine my surprise not to find you tucked away in your room as everyone imagined,”

So he had heard her after all. Adelina stood to face him, color high, “I didn’t mean to listen in--”

Dorian waved her off, eyeing her gown. It was obvious she had just returned and done so without her evening coat (she had sent Lady Thornwick’s back with Jim), “Nevermind that bit of theatrics but indulge my curiosity, if you will. What, precisely, are you up to?”

“Come inside” Adelina said, “I’ll show you.”

Dorian shrugged and waded through elfroot towards the window, leveraging himself up onto the sill as Adelina unfolded the leather square again and revealed her lock picking tools.

He paused halfway into the room, his form blocking out the light streaming through the windows,

“You just...carry those on you?”

She nodded, selecting the short hook from the array, “They come in handy.”

“At a ball?”

She had stopped formally attending all the galas, balls, and fetes around six years ago. There seemed little point in pretending to be a perfectly normal young lady after...well, after she realized no one was going to change their mind about her no matter how she acted. To the wealthy, magic was an amusement best left to the stage and having a glowing hand undermined what was proper--it lacked all the trappings of theatrical falsehood and deep down, that terrified them no matter how much they openly scorned the idea of ‘superstitious nonsense’.

But that wasn’t to say she stopped attending the events altogether. Only that she stopped entering through the grand foyers and bothering with corsets and that, instead of her own name on gossiping lips, it was the name Jenny.

“Especially at a ball,” she finally replied, skimming fingers over polished maple to search out the drawer by touch.  After finding the keyhole, she had it open with a series of deft twists and a few pained winces.

Adelina removed the papers and spread them out across the desk, selecting a series of handwritten letters with the seal of House Pavus inked at the bottom beneath the signatures.

“This man, Livius Erimond, he manages your family’s investments abroad?”

Dorian scrutinized the letters, taking one into his hand, “Erimond? I can’t say that name is familiar.”

“It has to be,” Adelina pulled out a stack of yellowed correspondences between her father and the man. They detailed the joint investment their families were finalizing prior to her birth, “He was coordinating this deal between our fathers before it fell through.”

The corners of his moustache compressed down over his mouth and Dorian scanned over the papers, “What sort of deal was it?”

“A rail line to the coast from Perivantium for exotic export. Fruit, I think.”

She handed him another letter, indicating the text, “He contacted my father some time ago, saying that there was an opportunity to forget all the bad blood and move forward,” she handed him another page, a response from Halward Pavus to her father, “My family lacked the capital at that point to invest in the venture, so your father offered a deal for the land we owned that extended the last few miles to the coast. In exchange for selling the land to his business partner, we would receive a portion of all future proceeds.”

Before he could finish scanning the pages in his hand, she produced the certificates of stock ownership, “But we were taken in, Erimond forged the value appraisals from the bank before sending them to me. The values he gave were far too low.”

Dorian set the letters down, understanding dawning terrible over his face. His hands cupped the tops of her shoulders, “My dear Adelina...I’ve never heard of this man. If he successfully forged the property appraisals, I think it may be safe to say that he has forged other things as well...such as my family crest. And...as much as I dislike telling you this, I must say that I’ve never heard my father speak of investing in a rail line.”

So it was true. She’d ruined her family and her life with nothing more than a pen and good intentions. If she had sold the land at their real value, her family wouldn’t still be scraping by to make ends meet. But the worst of it...she’d been duped into funding extortionists and murderers.

“Some of this man’s letters are postmarked from Ostwick.” Dorian said, “He lives here?”

“He had an office here,” she heard herself reply, “One of several across Thedas.”

“Well then!” Dorian clasped her hands in his own, “We will simply go to his office. There must be some evidence of his misdeeds kept there. We find it, take it to the authorities--whatever men in uniform you Southerners go to for this sort of thing--and seek reparations for your family.”

She nodded, restless energy uncoiling in her limbs, “We’ll have to take the horses, I don’t want to wake anyone for the carriage at this hour.”

He squeezed her hands, “I think it would be best to wait until morning.”

She disagreed, it would be nothing to break in and simply take everything before anyone was the wiser. Dorian read the stubborn tilt of her chin, “Considering that you may need to involve the authorities...it is usually best to do so when you aren’t currently breaking the law yourself.”

“But--”  
  
“No buts.” he examined her, “You can’t run around all night exhausted.” He began pushing her towards the doors, “Everything will still be there tomorrow. We’ll leave straight away after breakfast. Until then, get some rest.”

* * *

 

She did not rest very long.

The blackened ribcages of scorched aravels rose above the tall grass and half buried between their pointed edges were things rejected by the flames: copper pots, coins, a silvered mirror. They caught the light of the barrier, a human magpie nest flashing amid the weeds.

Above her was a broken sky. It was sealed, but sealed wrong. Green light warped the air, cracked it open like a geode to reveal crystal fragments within. She could feel things pressing at the edges, calling out to her to let them through.

"You'd think one would find less perilous places to explore.”

Adelina tried to turn her head but her neck would not obey and her eyes remained fixed on the facets shifting in the air, "I had a dream, a terrible dream that you were dead,” she said.

A chuckle. So familiar, her chest ached. She remembered hands smoothing over her hair while that voice tuted or shushed or lectured. Then she remembered those hands stiff in her own,  their warmth leeching away into the grass no matter how tightly she held on.

"And what do you think this is?"

Adelina woke to darkness and whispers in her ears.

Hang Dorian and hang rest. Rest was a luxury she could not afford when her time as a free woman could possibly be counted in the few remaining hours until morning. She needed proof of her innocence so far as the land sales were concerned. Perhaps it would be enough to keep her out of the sanitorium long enough to face the ghosts of the past and return to the meadow with Solas and break the curse.

She dressed quickly and practically, throwing a shawl over her hair rather than attempting to tame it into submission with pins. Tucking her pistol into her belt and securing her lockpicking pouch, she was out the window and onto the roof.

From what she could remember, Erimond’s office was in the main square, in the section of financial buildings just across the way from Ostwick’s most luxurious hotels and shops. By the time she reached the heart of town on foot, a thick marine fog had rolled in. The bottoms of buildings vanished in the mist, leaving rows of disembodied rooftops to float above her like strips of gauze fluttering in the sea air. She could barely make out the gilt sign illuminating the portico of the Golden Rind hotel only a handful of yards in the distance.

In these wee hours, the square was abandoned, swaddled up in the blanket of fog until dawn brought the sun and vendors setting up their market stalls. Her boots tapped lonely messages onto the damp cobblestones as she navigated by the brave glow of the electric lamps. Adelina clutched her shawl tighter, reminded of the tales of ghost lights that lured travellers off the road.

A tomcat yowled a warning in the distance. Another answered with an ugly, gutteral sound flattening into a hiss. She jumped back in alarm when their shadows darted out in front of her feet. The shapes seemed...wrong somehow, too big for cats and in the second before they vanished back into the fog, she counted eight legs on them rather than four. Nerves, it must be. But she still smoothed her hand over the Dwarven machine-stamped metal of her weapon

Something had changed in the air and it prickled along her neck as she continued through the billowing mist. A coppery glow illuminated the haze before her. Daylight? Had she misjudged the hour so badly? And her direction? She was certain she had been heading towards the north side of the square.

“Adelina.”

She stopped, drawing her gun in one rapid motion.

“It is all your fault.”

That voice. She rushed forward but the whisper only grew fainter. Spinning, she followed the thread through the fog.

“If you had only listened to me. If only--” the voice was dry, cracking around the edges, “If only you stayed away from the meadow.”

Sweat beaded up at her temple. It was growing uncomfortably warm, the moisture in the air turning to swirling vapor as the accusations grew louder, roaring in her ears.

“I’d still be alive if it weren’t for you.”

A sudden blast of heat whipped through the fog with a vicious crack, driving her to her knees. Ears ringing, knees smarting, she looked up. The mist parted, revealing the blinding glow on the horizon, Adelina shielded her eyes. It was not the sun.

It was Ostwick’s bank, haloed in flames. Part of the tile roof had collapsed in, blowing out the rows of glass windows. Smoke poured out of them, mingling with the fog, wreathing the brilliance of the inferno. She was close enough now to hear the furious thunder of the fire as it consumed the building.

She had to alert the fire brigade before it spread. Adelina stood, knees still quaking from the shock of the blast.

“Turn around,” a voice commanded, bellowing over the furor.

Fear rattled her, clutched her hand tight around her gun. No, she pried her fingers away from the grip and bent down to set the weapon at her feet before turning to face him.

Cullen was standing only a few paces away, his automatic pistol aimed directly at her chest. Dwarven metal gleamed dull red in the light of the fire, danger bound up in steel. The threat of it sent acrid eddies rippling up from pit of her stomach.  Behind her back, her fist pulsed a shivering, arrhythmic heartbeat like a thing alive.

“So you are helping them,” he shouted, “You helped them do this.”

“I swear I am not, this is all a misunderstanding,” she yelled back, wrestling back the bleak swell of panic surging up in her veins. It was a lost battle, she knew that immediately. The curse turned her fear into a sum that never stopped adding onto itself. It began with the most fundamental instinct: survival at any cost, and compounded it with real terror: what that cost might be.

She looked around, eyes stinging in the smoke. This was no secluded meadow hemmed in by magic, they were at the very center of a sleeping, unaware Ostwick. It would be a cost beyond measure. Hundreds of lives, his among them. Pain seized through her arm and her muscles all contracted at once, locking up in a tetanic fit from the shoulder down.

Their only hope for avoiding bloodshed was for her to convince him to let her go.  

“We need to alert the fire brigade--” she insisted.

Wood groaned behind her like a dying beast, massive beams bowing in the heat. The vast tremors of their straining bulk swallowed up the rest of her words. In the distance, people began shouting, bells clanging away. The fire had spread beyond the financial district.

Cullen shook his head but hands remained steady, knuckles white with tension as he kept the barrel trained on her,  “You’re coming with me to the sanitorium.”

Flakes of hot ash fluttered down around them. One pressed a searing kiss against her cheek but she didn’t move, she didn’t dare when all her strength was turned inward, “Let me go and I can explain everything.”

His eyes narrowed at her, “You mean lie?”

Adelina clutched the fabric of her skirt as her control gave way inch by terrible inch. Fear burned, hot and bright in her belly, licking hot tongues of adrenaline up the walls of her restraint. She shook with effort, sweat pooling down her bodice, “Please, Cullen. ”

At her back, the flames roared. Shouts turned to screams in the night--unearthly screams that sounded like fabric tearing, bones cracking, a soft ‘oh’ of muted surprise. She smelled blood in the smoke, heard it spatter against the grass as the fog twisted the furor around her into memory. _Rip. Tear. Rend._

Through it all, she could hear the even cadence of his voice as he drew closer to her, stopping an arm’s length away, “You’re coming with me to the sanitorium.”

Everything happened at once. The rest of the bank’s roof collapsed in, releasing a blast wave of heat and pulverized bits of brick. As they both stumbled, she threw her weight against him, slamming her arm into his and knocking the pistol out of his grip. But before she could lurch away and attempt to run, he snatched her flashing hand up, wrenching her back painfully. Light lanced up from her palm, piercing through brick dust and smoke to set twin reflections dancing in his eyes. They widened, pupils glowing vivid green and otherworldly. In them, she saw triumph and malice.

"It's so dim here," he spoke softly, in a marvelling whisper that she could barely hear over the sound of a thousand terrible things. It sounded wrong, he sounded wrong and his fingers were so cold, they burned, "They can’t see how bright you burn. Soon they will.”

Her fear was a thing unleashed, sinking vicious claws into her. It was too late, the air was thin and she could already feel something rise up from the furrows raked up by terror.

He was smiling at her with sharp teeth, "Soon the whole world will see."

_Rend._

Suddenly, his hand slackened against her wrist. He looked stunned, bringing trembling fingertips up to his chest where an inky stain had appeared, stark against his vest. A dark line trickled from the corner of his mouth and he slumped forward, into her arms.

Adelina stumbled back and silence dropped over the world. She could hear his shallow breath, her own gasp, the liquid gurgle of blood spurting up hot and thick between pale fingers. It was soaking through her blouse, smearing over her fingertips as she pressed her hands over his to put pressure on the wound. But it was useless, he was losing too much blood too fast. No, no, she didn’t want this to happen.

This couldn’t be happening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the cliffhanger! (I'm not, I've had so many fic cliffhangers torment me in the past and now its my turn! mwahahaha). On a random side-note, the idea of the investment venture is based on early 1900s fruit export from Central America where huge swaths of land were cleared for rail lines to transport bananas. There was so much money tied up in banana export, it later lead to CIA-orchestrated government coups to keep American business in charge. All for fruit. Of course, I would take Erimond's stated business plans with a grain of salt, the guy is sketchy.


	18. The Accuser and the Accused

Cullen tugged up his overcoat collar with numb fingertips to ward against the damp but it made no difference. Cold soaked through the wool fibers, down past his skin and into the marrow of his bones. He wasn’t more than four steps out of the hotel doors and already he was shivering.

With the city steeped in fog, it would be all too easy to lose his way and he hadn't had a destination in mind to begin with other than anywhere that wasn't his hotel room. He stopped on the steps beneath the portico of the hotel, taking a moment to orient himself by his vague memory of the square. A hopeless endeavor. Well, if he suddenly found himself wading into the ocean, he would know to turn around. He descended the steps into the mist.

Immediately, the skin at the nape of his neck drew tight. He felt watched; observed by things hovering where the vapor condensed an arm’s length away. Part of him was certain that beneath the illusion of stillness and silence, shapes twisted and writhed, only the faint impressions of their shifting shadows visible in the grey. If he reached forward, would he brush against one? What would his fingers find submerged within?

A cat hissed in the night. At least, he thought it was a cat until the refractions of sound echoed around him--a rattling wooden squeal. His hands were already fumbling around his neck for the strap of a gas mask that wasn’t there.

Of course it wasn’t there, it had caught a chunk of shrapnel meant for his neck and he’d abandoned it to the mud. But another metal scrap had found its mark and lodged itself deep. He could feel it now if he pressed, protruding beneath the bandage. It hadn't looked serious, a wound so small, it barely merited a bandage in the first place. But his hands had grown clammy and his heart rate was steadily increasing. In the encroaching poison cloud he could barely make out the wavering outline of concertina wire wrapping around wooden posts. Shock was setting in.

He supposed it didn't matter if the rashvine took him. It was looking to be slow going for him regardless and he didn’t see any benefit in panicking over which sort of slow, agonizing death finally dragged him to the Maker’s side. Perhaps--probably-- it was the blood loss, but he was serene about it all. Accepting. _I shall not be left to wander the drifting roads of the Fade._

Someone was fitting a mask over his face. Carver Hawke cursed at him, swatting away his sweating palms as they tried to push the mask back away. No, he was done for anyway. But the damned man was too strong and Cullen could barely feel his own fingers.

Carver’s curses turned into coughs.

Breath coming too fast, Cullen smoothed his hands down over his coat lapels as the gas alarm rattle faded away back into memory. He sucked in a lungful of heavy air. It tasted like salt and stung his throat.

A dark shape, tall and spindly appeared in the sea of dirty gauze. It was a shadow, given dimension by the strange refractions of light against the moisture in the air. But what was it the shadow of exactly? Nothing...natural. Cullen moved cautiously towards it, the cross-hatched surface of his pistol grip making rough sounds as it scratched against his bandaged hand.

Teeth snapped down on his other arm, incisors furrowing into the wool overcoat before Cullen drew his weapon and slammed the butt of his gun against a furred skull. Squealing, it released his arm, recoiling with a flick of one long, thick tail. It was a rat, the size of a medium dog. Abnormally large, impossibly large: not a rat at all but something taking the shape of one.  It turned to leap at him again and Cullen pulled the trigger, the bullet catching the monster mid-air and throwing it down to the cobblestones. Bloody fur disintegrated immediately, leaving only a sodden pile of ash.  

A fear demon. He’d never seen the like but he’d read accounts of them. This had to be one of the weaker ones that preyed on phobias by taking their shape. Spiders, snakes--rats. No doubt there were more, possibly stronger variants, lurking in the fog.

He looked around, trying to get his bearings. The square was large, the length of a few city blocks and he hadn't walked very far from the hotel; but there was nothing to tell him exactly how far he'd gone or the direction he’d just come from--nothing but grey. Only a hundred feet away from aid and he could spend the last remaining hours until dawn trying to find his way back again. Who knew what harm the demons could do in the meantime.

And unlike the hotel, they would find _him_. He only had to wait.

“I could make it all go away. Just say yes, Cullen. Just give in and the pain will stop.”   
  
Not long apparently. Cullen followed Solona Amell’s voice and shouted back, his voice steel, “You’ll have to do better than that demon.”

In the distance, something burned.

"You will do as I command, Cullen."

Taunting replies died on his lips. He had done as she commanded, eagerly and without question--the perfect soldier. Memories came to him in the mist, a thousand needles gleaming silver in the orange burst of light. He gripped his pistol so tightly, the wounds opened up and spotted the bandage red.

“They are not like us Cullen, a uniform does not make a soldier. They aren’t here by choice--not like us--they don’t care what happens in this war. They will desert, the very moment we give them the chance. That is all the thanks we will have for letting them out of the sanitoria where they belong.”

The voice was no longer Meredith’s...it was his own. It was the voice of a man who stood by while his commanding officer went mad with power. A man who consigned the men and women under his command to suffer the repercussions of paranoia and fear when he should have protected them. Was he still that man after all? Still blind with fear?

Cullen felt the gun grow slippery in his grasp; his cuts had soaked through the bandage entirely.  

He saw Adelina Trevelyan peering down from the rail at the figures below. Entranced. Entrancing.

“Nothing more than extortionists and murderers.” Her voice was all at once soft and furious. “These people were intimidated, threatened,”

He saw her nails torn and bleeding, claw marks tapering at the wrist as if she had managed to pull away from the demon’s grasp. Defensive wounds.

“Most quietly tried to settle it without help for fear of retribution.”

She was keeping secrets, she was involved--of that he was certain. But he was no longer convinced that meant what Cassandra thought it did. 

Maker, why hadn’t he seen the alternative? Why had he been so sure it was all deception?

_Experience._

Cullen stopped. The air had grown hotter and ash rained down from the sky, settling into thick grey drifts on the sleeves of his coat. In the distance he heard alarm bells--fire engines. But much closer was the guttering roar of flames, dwarfing all other sound except a voice edged in fear.

“Let me go--”

For a moment, he heard nothing over the rush of blood in his ears. She sounded so close, right next to him almost; but sudden currents of heat churned the fog, whipping up acrid plumes of vapor and smoke towards him. His eyes were watering. It was almost impossible to see.

Could it be the fear demon, sifting through his mind? He twisted around suddenly, forcing his eyes open against the sting. Just then, the smoke shifted, sucked towards the light as if inhaled by a massive breath. Only ten paces away floated a skeletal creature, jointed appendages extending out like scythes. It faced a woman who did not attempt to move away, her face paralyzed with fear.

Adelina Trevelyan.

Cullen aimed his weapon but stumbled to his knees when a violent wave of pressurized air exhaled over them. Shards of brick and wood pelted him, nicking the exposed skin of his face and neck. The pain didn’t register, but warm rivulets of blood trickled down his forehead. He saw Adelina spring into action, colliding into the demon before darkness swam through his view.

He dropped his gun and raced for them.  

Blood and ash blinded him but his fingers drew the dagger from his belt on memory alone. Cullen reached forward, his fingers grasping too-thin air. A second, a handful of heartbeats and then they found purchase. Cullen blinked. Swirled with ash and blood, a jointed carapace glistened sickly green beneath his fingers. He buried his knife into it.

It screamed, the high whistle of an artillery shell piercing through the air. The demon fell forward and the dagger pulled free with a wet, sucking noise. Cullen jerked away, clasping his hands over his ears to block out the screams that sounded like a thousand terrible things all at once. Gnawing, skittering, rustling sounds that crawled beneath his skin. He must bear it...withstand the horror clawing at his mind and finish this thing off.

Cullen fumbled blindly, finally grabbing a jointed appendage. The edge of the carapace sliced into his palm but he did not release it, did not let it escape as his knife punched through the hard exoskeleton into the soft flesh beneath.

The dagger clattered to the cobblestones and suddenly his hands were grasping nothing.

“Cullen? But you were just--there was so much blood, how are you--” Adelina stopped and shoved him forcefully just as something whistled in the air where his head had been. They fell to the ground together and he pulled her tight against him, twisting around to take the brunt of the impact.

She sprang up, cursing softly, boots scrabbling over stones. Cullen swiped at his eyes with a filthy sleeve. He saw a blurry shape of mossy green--her skirt. She was on her knees, searching amid the fragments of still burning rubble scattered around them.

Above her, the air stuttered. Before he could shout a warning, she seized something metallic from the cobblestones. Swinging her arm in an arc towards the demon as it appeared, she fell back and fired three shots before the monstrous figure fell to the street and disintegrated.

Cullen was up, stumbling towards her, reaching out to help her stand. She clasped his hands but then released them just as fast, staring at his palms with an unreadable expression. He remembered himself then. Of course she didn’t want his help.

“I’m sorry, I had no right to--”

“You _are_ real right?” she asked, pulling a handkerchief from her pocket. Gingerly, she took his unbandaged hand in her own and he realized then that it was cut--not badly although it was a messy wound. Blood was dripping down his wrist, staining his coat and shirtsleeves. Pressing the handkerchief down over the cut, she wound it around and tied a tight, simple knot in the back before releasing him.

“Pardon?” Cullen asked, finally gathering his wits.

Startled green eyes flashed up at him and then after a pause, she brushed her gloved fingertips against his temple. Her eyes were searching, piercing, and he felt his gathered wits flutter away like sheets of paper in the morning sky. Cullen gulped, throat gone dry.

“You aren’t...are you badly hurt?” she asked.

Unbidden, his hands came up to trace his thumbs over her shoulders and they lingered there while the fear knotted up in his stomach began to unravel, “Are you?”

She shook her head before remembering herself and snatched her hand from his face as if it were on fire. The transformation was rapid--bright eyes flickering and dimming as her reserve dropped into place. It looked unnatural on her, all those avid expressions locked away behind a guarded mask.

Staring down at the metal dagger at his feet instead of meeting his eyes, she said, “Thank you for saving my life.”

Cullen let his hands fall from her shoulders, wanting to ask why she was in the square in the first place. But before he could, she pre-empted him.

“I know what you must be thinking. Why I’m...” She twisted the fingertips of her other glove. “I’ll just...I’ll show you. Can you come?”

Cullen nodded. “Yes, I--thank you as well.” He bent down to pick up his knife and added, “For my life, I mean.”

After he retrieved his pistol, Adelina lead them closer into the madness surrounding the fire. It had spread fast, all the buildings jammed close together doing little to contain it. These streets were crowded with people in their nightclothes carting buckets of water, wetting down the walls of the shops nearby to protect from errant sparks. Just as many simply stood by and watched their livelihoods burn to the ground, despair in their eyes. Everyone was so focused on ignoring them that it was obvious to Cullen that no one actually was. Above the dull roar of flames clanged the persistent bells of the fire engines and every so often, terrified shrieks echoing in the night. 

Adelina chewed on the bottom of her lip, worry slipping out beneath her guarded mask. She halted in front of a building. Well, ‘building’ was a charitable word for a structure that lacked three walls and a roof. Soot stained and barely distinguishable lettering spelled out ‘Erimond Brokerage Firm’ above the door--miraculously spared from the flames. The fire had been extinguished already, only ghostly wisps of heat and dying embers remained.

A crowd of spectators had gathered around it. More than curiosity compelling them. They looked at the building as if new horrors might spring forth at any moment. It was an all-too familiar scene. The compulsory medical examinations in Ferelden didn’t catch everyone. Every so often a child escaped notice and he’d arrive to a scene just like this one.

“What happened here?” he asked the man beside him, taking care to keep his voice low to avoid unwanted attention.

“Afflicted,” the man said, confirming Cullen’s suspicions. He wore a coat over a striped nightdress and was squinting as if he normally wore spectacles but had not thought to grab them in the mad rush outside. “Quite the commotion, I saw it all from my room above my shop.” He gestured vaguely behind him, presumably towards the shop. “They had trouble restraining him and then...”

“Did he start the fire?”

“Yes, some sort of triggered explosive device--” he reached up to adjust glasses that weren’t there.

Someone overheard that and muttered, “Was magic is wot it was.”

The man beside him rolled his eyes. “Superstitious nonsense.”

“The Chant of Light says--”

“Surely you don’t believe in the _literal_ interpretation. Anyone with an education knows those passages are metaphorical.”

Cullen turned away. Let them bicker while the city burned around them.

“It _is_ her,” someone near hissed and he cast an uneasy glance at the growing crowd of spectators emerging from the scraps of burnt-off fog. Adelina didn’t seem to notice any of it--her face drawn and pale beneath smudges of grey, eyes fixed on the building and filled with despair.

He took her arm, warily eying the townspeople. “I don’t think it is safe to remain here.”

She said nothing and let him draw her away from the building, walking beside him with the eerie gait of a sleepwalker.

People began to mutter, hurling accusations he’d heard before while investigating the docks with Cassandra. One woman whimpered, “I saw her, just minutes ago in their room. She was going to steal them from their beds.”

Cullen cursed under his breath, walking faster with her arm still clasped in his own. He didn’t know where he was going but he did not want to test the limits of their fear--not when he could feel it building in the air, a static charge ready to spark into violence. After ducking into a shadowed alley to lose the people still trailing them, he stopped to assess the situation.

He’d need to get back to the hotel, alert Cassandra and Solas of the demons still roaming the streets so they could coordinate a plan of attack. And he needed to ensure that Adelina Trevelyan would be well away when that happened. The common, ‘uneducated’ folk of Ostwick saw their cursed woman in every shadow, but tonight, with demons running wild and manifesting into the many forms of fear, that would be more than just wild imagination.

Adelina pulled away, kneeling down to pluck a paper up from the ground. It was another flyer, ripped in half and overlaid with the imprint of the black hand.

“Do you know what is going on?” he asked. “Will you tell me?”

She stood, letting the paper flutter back to the ground. His questions broke through her daze and she focused on him, thoughts scrying across her face, blood draining from her lips as she compressed them down into a thin, tight line. He could see her internal debate; if she trusted him, if she didn’t, if he trusted her, if this was a trap or a trick. Did she have any answers? Did he?

“Before,” he started, “I was rash...made assumptions.”

Maker, he sounded so brusque and impersonal; the physician’s training shining through once again like a bad copper. He had no idea how to overcome their mutual suspicion and his instinct was to be as detached as possible. It was as if there were an invisible wall between them--one he’d more than done his part to help build up--and every word out of his mouth just another brick at the top.

He fisted his restless hands inside of his coat pockets and pressed on, self-doubt turning his voice even colder, defensive almost, “For that I apologize. I’m not here to participate in some witch hunt. I only want the truth.”

“The _truth_? Would you even believe it?”

She spoke as if her questions were stones she meant to fling at him--hard, polished accusations. But somehow she could not quite bring herself to release the last and clutched it close instead--voice dropping into a whisper. Would he believe her?

He knew better than most how difficult truth was to find. Even by--or perhaps especially by--those who looked for it the hardest. Cullen sighed, frustrated, and withdrew his hand from pocket to rub the back of his neck, but stopped at the sight of her handkerchief. Sensible linen edged in green embroidery. Peeking out from the knot she tied was a corner bearing the letters A and T.

“I would try at least.” he said at last. It was all he could offer and it felt so small, so cheap. But he couldn’t change the past or erase his mistakes. All he could do was struggle to remain objective.

In the dark, her eyes reflected back the glow of the fires in the distance. She stood there, considering his words for a silent moment.

“Could you locate someone?” she asked finally. “You seem to have some resources.”

“It would depend.” He didn’t want to make any false promises.The Spymaster was the one with all the resources and she had not sent any telegrams other than the pile of discouraging dispatches awaiting them when they arrived in Ostwick. Josephine had informed the rest of them of this with the sort of brave facade she put on anything that troubled her.

“The man they took to the sanitorium tonight,” she said. “Could you find him?”

Cullen started. The sanitorium was the last place Cassandra wanted any of them going near. Any hint of a Chantry investigation and the radicalists would go to ground, she said, and it would be months before they re-emerged. Months their investigation could not afford.

“Just what exactly are you asking me to do?” he asked, careful to keep the suspicion from his voice. “Who is this man?”

“I don’t know who he is,” she confessed. “But if he set fire to that firm, he has information on The Hand. I need you to find him and question him.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all! So sorry again for the cliffhanger, especially when I wanted this to be a one week turnaround and that ended up being two and now I feel awful. I took some artistic liberties with the fear demon mythos. We know from the codex that they imitate voices/sounds that people fear the most and we know that fearlings definitely take the form of fears. Given that we've seen many demons assume the forms of people to manipulate emotions (Ishmael, every desire demon ever), I thought it made sense that a fear demon would have this skill on their toolbelt. 
> 
> Just curious, did anyone notice the bandage (or lack thereof in Ch. 17?)? Poor Cullen, I reallyyy wanted that tip-off in there but it was harder then I thought to play up the complete lack of it in the last chapter. Would have been pretttty obvious if I was like "And then she saw his hand, his UNBANDAGED hand" lol. I tried being subtle, it was much easier to work in the references in this chapter though haha. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and I'm sorry, I won't cliffhanger again like that! It felt so mean since I'm not exactly a rapid updater. Please forgive me!


	19. The Trusted and the Betrayed

Her kidskin gloves were covered in dried blood. Maker, that would never come out. Another pair ruined unless she could manage to dye over the virulent green smears of demon blood. Or she could leave them as they were and try to pass them off as a new trend from Orlais.

_Oh darling, haven’t you heard? Demon-bloodied leather is the absolute latest in fashionable accessories._

She laughed silently to herself. It could hardly be worse than those sequined trousers made of sheer silk that ballooned out past the knees and fastened into tight cuffs at the ankles--a trend out of exotic Par Vollen it was claimed.

Cullen shot her a perplexed glance touched with worry and something else she didn’t care to examine too closely. “Was something amusing?”

Apparently her laugh had not been as silent as she thought. Another bubbled up in a champagne fizz of inappropriate amusement and caught her words up into a--Andraste’s dimples, a giggle. “No. In fact, I fear I may have stumbled in an Antivan tragedy.”

Wrongfully accused heroine? Rumors of an elven curse? Treachery and betrayal? All the components were there.

She paused on the street to lean against a window box full of sweet-smelling herbs and mused, more to herself than to him, “Strangely absent of princes disguised as commoners...unless--”

Cullen caught her glance with a frown.

“No.” She laughed again and it thumped painfully against her sternum. They were coming on like hiccups--impossible to stop. “Plenty of demons but no princes.”

She clutched helpless arms around her midriff as hollow, gasping laughs juddered up through her aching chest. It wasn’t funny. Nothing was funny. His shallow breath and cold skin--it wasn’t real, she knew that now. It was just a trick of the fear demon, but it felt real. She could still feel blood soaking down into her gloves, spilling over her wrists to stain her sleeves as she watched him bleed out in her arms.

It _felt_ real. She wanted to tear off her gloves and scrub her arms and scream but she couldn’t do any of that.

His hand brushed against her shoulder, hesitant at first but then firm when she didn’t recoil away. She couldn’t, she could barely breathe. On reflex, she reached forward to steady herself and found herself clutching at the lapels of his coat while her legs threatened to give beneath her.

Warmth--wonderfully solid and real--folded around her. Adelina let herself sink into his arms, pressing her cheek against the cotton of his shirt collar, inhaling the whisper of smoke that rose from the worn fibers. Underneath it, sensible and reassuring, was the scent of shave cream and soap.

“It’s alright.” His breath cascaded over her temple. “It’ll be alright.”

Against her back, his thumb traced restless circles while he struggled for something more than empty platitudes. Then he spoke again, so softly she could barely hear him over the harsh sound of her own rapid gasping, “Many are those who rise up against me.”

His palm rested against her spine. “But my faith sustains me; I shall not fear the legion.”

From their first meeting in the Chantry tower, she’d been fascinated with his voice. But this evoked something more, something deeper than her collector’s interest. It reverberated out from within her, his whisper a bronze clapper striking music in the cavernous hollows of her heart. Trembling echoes shivered through her limbs and up her wrists where they dissolved away against the singed wool of his coat.

_I shall embrace the light. I shall weather the storm. I shall endure._

“Thank you,” she said, suddenly needing to put some distance between them before she did something foolish, ”I--I’m alright. I don’t know what came over me.”

Cullen cleared his throat, letting his arms fall to his side and stepping back to give her a wide berth. Too wide; cold air whistled between them and she craved the strong, steady warmth of him again to block it out. A mad impulse to pull him back thrilled in her fingertips.

He reached out suddenly and rubbed a thumb over her cheek. “You’ve got--” he stopped, eyes burning dark, “--a smudge of ash from my coat.”

“I think more than a smudge.” She forced a laugh--it didn’t sound half bad considering that her heart had taken up temporary residence in her throat. “More ash visible than skin I think by now.”

Maker, the slow curve of his lips was wonderful. He let his hand drop to his pocket to pull out a sooty square of linen. “I’d offer my handkerchief since you have lent me yours but I don’t think it would do you much good.”

Adelina grinned despite herself. “It’s no matter, I’ve resigned myself to being beyond hope.” 

She’d lost her shawl yet again--that was the second one this week alone, she would need to be more careful; her hair was a bramble, and she was covered in ash and ichor.

“So long as you don’t try to offer me a mirror.”

* * *

Sera was passed out with a jug of elderflower spirits curled under the crook of her arm like a precious child. A night of frayed nerves and a stomach full of knots made the picturesque vision intolerable and Adelina emptied a nearby mug of stale beer onto the woman’s head.

Sera was up, sputtering obscenities and then pulled a sullen face when she saw her. “If it isn’t _Lady Trevelyan_. I was sleeping if you didn’t notice, my lady.”

“The financial district is in flames and demons are roaming the streets, how did you possibly manage to sleep?”

“Who says I wasn’t just out there?” Sera demanded. “Can’t even catch a wink yeah? What about you? Where’ve you been?”

Cullen shifted and Sera finally took note of the man. Her eyes fairly bulged but then turned sly in a blink. “ _Ohhh._ Found a work around for the whole not-being-a-prince bit did you? Quick of you.”

“No, that’s not…” She couldn’t help but duck her head to avoid any possibility of eye-contact with the man in question. Andraste’s teeth, there were other things she should be worrying about. “So the Jennies are--”

“Brigade already stopped the fire from spreading but half the financial district is toasted--so that’s the end of the world for your mum’s lot yeah?”

Adelina shook her head. “They’ll be fine. After Ansburg, everything is insured twice over.”

Two years ago, The Hand had blown up the town’s one and only bank and sent the entire area into a financial panic. It was rare to see the affluent targeted by the group and despite Ansburg, many still thought The Hand was a problem for the poor and therefore not worth taking seriously.

“What a weight off my mind,” Sera deadpanned, dragging a clumsy hand through her hair and making it look even worse. “So we took care of those…” she shuddered, “...things. Those little empty... _things_.”

The fear demons. Sera was visibly shaken and Adelina checked the urge to reach out to reassure her. Fear made Sera angry and on top of that, she was still fuming with her over the gala--she’d likely take a swing if Adelina tried ‘mothering’.

“Jim saw sodding _bees_. Of all the stupid shite--swarms of bees.” She cackled, quicksilver glee displacing her fear and anger. “A few saw you.”

Adelina started at that. “Me? Who--”

No, she didn’t want to know. She’d always suspected some of the Jennies bought into the stories about her--even the ones obviously fabricated by Sera. Not that they’d openly admit it around her or Sera--in Sera’s case for fear of a fist to the face. It shouldn’t matter what they thought to themselves, she told herself, so long as they didn’t mutter the Chant of Light under their breath whenever she walked past.

Sera frowned. “Don’t mind them. Pissing in their trousers just because you saved their arses at the theater when you--” She stopped short to shoot Cullen a narrow-eyed look of suspicion. “So what’s _he_ here for then?”

“I’ll admit that I was wondering the same myself.” Cullen glanced her way as a hint of reproach crept into his words. She hadn’t given him much to go on about coming to the tavern to meet with the ‘contact’ who could help them. It was probable that he did not expect that contact to be five feet, two inches of pure mischief.

“We need to get him to the sanitorium without anyone recognizing him.”

Sera jumped up, a decidedly evil variety of glee in her eyes. “Jenny’s got just the thing.”

* * *

“Absolutely not.” Cullen growled, folding his arms across his chest and examining his reflection in the dressing room mirror. “This is ridiculous.”

“You don’t want them to know you’re you right?” Sera demanded. “Unless you got any grand ideas, shut it yeah?”

“I think the facial hair is a tad excessive,” Adelina offered, tugging on the loose fingertips of the leather gloves Sera had procured on their way to the theater--men’s gloves cut for a motoring suit. She doubted that the original owner parted with them knowingly but it was such a relief to peel off her old pair she didn’t question the morally dubious source.

“ _Now_   you tell me. It took ages to get it all stuck it on.”

“I told you before, you just didn’t listen.”

Sera cocked her head to the side to consider that. “Don’t sound like me.”

Cullen reached up to scratch at the thick tufts of his new beard. “Isn’t there some other way?”

“Too late to change your mind now.” Sera cackled, brushing stray bits of hair and adhesive off her palms and onto her trousers. “That glue’s permanent.”

“It isn’t” Adelina cut in at the look he cast her way. It was all she could do not to laugh at the poor man’s tortured expression. “I switched it back.”

“T-this will never work,” Cullen sputtered, “I look--”

Sera was fed up, in part because Adelina had foiled her schemes and because there were no more bits of facial hair to glue on. “Then hand over one of your medical license card and I get a Jenny to do this right.”

“No.” Adelina said just as Cullen answered, “Absolutely not.”

Sera crossed her arms in front of her chest. “And why not? He doesn’t want to do it. He’ll muck it up.”

“ _He_ does it or no one does.” Cullen glowered. “I won’t stand idly by while you send a thug to infiltrate a medical facility.”

“Thug huh? That’s what you think we are yeah? How about--”

Adelina cut in before Sera could work herself up even more, “Cullen can do this, and we need his help...I don’t trust anyone else to do this”

Sera’s mouth popped open. “But you trust _him?_ ”

Adelina tucked the edges of her plaidweave shawl--reclaimed from Sera--closer, wrapping herself up tight like a child with a favorite, albeit hideous, blanket. Instead of answering, she reached forward to press down a bit of colored wax that was Cullen’s prosthetic nose. Despite Sera’s less than noble intentions, it was one of her better noses. Unless someone was very close they’d never notice it was a bit of cosmetic genius.

About as close as she was now, come to think of it. He was watching her movements, the electric bulbs of the vanity casting shadows of burnt umber in his eyes. It made her breath catch in her ribs and Adelina pulled away.

“I do,” she said finally.

She shouldn’t. But she did. In this at least.

Cullen seemed just as startled by the confession as Sera and a pang of regret shot through her. What would it have been like if she hadn’t been cursed when they had met? Without secrets and suspicion lingering below every word and action, poisoning the well?

“You smell terrible,” Sera pointed out to him, “like roast demons. I guess I’ll go find you a proper suit.”

She was out the door to hunt something down and Cullen sighed. “Do you two do this often? For this Red Jenny person?”

Adelina smiled and flicked a rosebud drooping over the crystal lip of its vase. It showered the top of the vanity with yellow petals. Charade hated yellow flowers, no wonder she’d left them in her dressing room to wilt.

“Red Jenny isn’t a person, she’s a group of people who share a common identity. But yes, disguises do come in handy on occasion.”

Charade’s dainty vanity stool upholstered in lilac satin wasn’t formed with a tall, broad-shouldered man in mind and by the tension in his limbs, he was clearly expecting the thing to give under him at any moment. “Why share it at all?”

“Well, it makes her more of a mythology than a person. When you’re just a person you can be stopped--you can be killed. Mythologies are harder to get rid of.”

For better or worse. Adelina Trevelyan, inconsequential daughter of Bann Trevelyan and a second-rate Antivan soprano, learned that lesson a long time ago. Which was part of the reason she was so eager to join the organization. If she couldn’t be rid of the cursed girl of Ostwick, then she would become someone else entirely. Someone better.

“But what is the mythology? What does your group actually do?”

The question would have been easier to answer before. Sera had summed it up best back then, ‘little people sticking it to big pricks’. But The Hand changed everything. When the police wouldn’t do anything, when every week was a new missing person or a new pile of rubble--who was there to put a stop to it? Soon the Friends of Red Jenny spent more time procuring weapons and foiling The Hand than they spent greasing up ballroom floors. Of course, Sera managed to find the time to do both.

But Adelina didn’t want to talk to him about that just yet. Not when she was two steps behind every move The Hand was making. She needed to be cautious. The timing of the fire might have been a coincidence--it was impossible to predict when and where the physicians would arrive to cart someone off to the sanitorium--but instinct told her that it was not.

She’d become complacent in the past year; assumed The Hand was gone for good when they were simply laying low to lick their wounds and set traps. Had they led the Seeker and her companions here? They were obviously behind the demonic summonings and doing an excellent job so far of broadcasting that fact. But she wasn’t sure if she was the intended prey for their schemes--or if Cullen and his companions were.

“It’s hard to describe,” she finally said. “When I first heard of Red Jenny, it seemed like all she did was make my mother and her social club miserable. Which was amusing enough but I had no intention of helping anyone do something I could manage well enough on my own.”

He may have smiled but she couldn’t tell from beneath the brush of his wiry beard. It was too much. She began to remove the side pieces to keep her hands busy--slow so the adhesive didn’t rip off his skin along with the hair pieces. “But then one of the banns invested in a garment factory by the docks and the factory foreman began handing out photographs to our tenants.”

Adelina leaned back to judge her progress and resumed. “They were staged. Healthy, grinning children eating huge meals, surrounded by toys. Not a hint of a single machine.”

“Children?” his jaw tensed, a flutter of hard muscle against her palm. She checked the urge to try to smooth it away.

“Common for garment factories--children have small hands to thread the machines. He claimed they would be treated well and whatever income they made that didn’t go to their care would be sent back to the families. Many jumped at the opportunity--it was a bad year.”

Setting the hair pieces aside, she looked down to her lap. “I--my family tried to help our tenants but we weren’t doing well ourselves.”

Although no one would have known it unless they took a peek into the ledgers.

“The conditions were...terrible, even for factory work.” Her hands were careless but to his credit, he didn’t wince when she tugged off a piece too quickly. “My sister Emalina and I started a charitable committee to petition the owner to improve the safety for his workers. But no one wanted to do anything except hold expensive luncheons and talk about how dreadful the situation was.”

The two of them had been so idealistic that they didn’t even think twice when their mother offered to head the committee efforts. Lady Trevelyan didn’t give a fig for the plight of factory workers. She did, however, care very deeply over upstaging Lady Penrose’s charity efforts for Ostwick’s ‘afflicted’.

“Red Jenny came along and within a week, the foreman was fired in disgrace and the situation looked so badly for the bann, the factory is now one of the safest in Ostwick. Jenny gets results--even if the methods are a bit...unorthodox.”

She had whittled down Sera’s work into a foppish goatee; something more appropriate for a doctor. Adelina bit her lip and inspected her work with a critical eye. Foppish didn’t suit him at all. Perfect. The man was too handsome by half and handsome attracted unwanted attention.

“Much better. You look quite distinguished.”

Cullen twisted to catch his reflection in the mirror and some of the tension dissipated from his shoulders. “Thank you,” he said and she felt it like a warm touch against her back, “it doesn’t itch nearly as much as before.”

He reached up towards his nose and Adelina slapped his hand away as if he were a child reaching for sweets. “The more attention you pay to it the more attention you’ll draw to it. Try to pretend nothing is there.”

“But will this even matter?” Cullen asked. “They’ll know my name from my card.”

She perched on the edge of the table to face him, her skirt falling against his knees. “Could I see it for a moment?”

After a moment of hesitation, he reached into his coat pocket for his billfold and took a rectangle of cardstock from it to hand over to her. She recognized the medical crest embossed into it: a flaming sword.

She took it, taking care to grasp it so that her index finger obscured part of his first name. “Just hold it like this when you present it. If you do it with enough authority, they’ll be too intimidated to look closely.”

Then she demonstrated, drawing on her own, rather vast, experience dealing with doctors. It was simply a matter of quick motions and a brusque air that conveyed you were much too important to waste time on minor delays and silly questions. Added to all that: a look of detached condescension.

He watched her mimicry with mild admiration. “You’re good at that.”

“Yes.” Adelina smiled, offering back his license with a clever twist of her fingers. “I’ve known my share of doctors. The sanitorium staff prefers to remain appraised of my development.”

He took his card from her, looking suddenly grim. For half a moment she thought he might say something but before he could, Sera returned. Or rather, a pile of men’s clothing sporting legs and arms burst, unannounced, through the dressing room door. It trembled, then flew apart, showering the floor with neckties and trousers.

“See if any of these work,” Sera instructed.

Adelina straightened. “Sera will get you to the sanitorium. Try to discover this man’s connection to The Hand. Make sure to ask him what part Livius Erimond has to play in all of this.”

Cullen plucked a necktie from where it landed on the vanity table. “And after I do this, you’ll tell me everything about your encounters with these radicalists?”

“Everything,” she lied.

* * *

 

“Well, if it isn’t our little collector,” The Iron Bull rumbled. “I knew you’d be by…” he paused, his one eye flitted over her. “Rough night?’

She cut straight to business. “I need to hire The Chargers for a _discreet_ job.”

If he was surprised, he hid it well. “Well, we could do with something to keep us busy. Might it have anything to do with Ostwick’s sudden demon problem?”

“It might,” Adelina evaded. “I need tails on two people. I want to know where they’re going and what they’re doing along with any information you can find on their personal history.”

“Sure thing Boss. You got names for me?”

“An elf named Solas who arrived with the Chantry’s diplomatic envoy and...”

A strange emotion clamped down tight on her throat. She felt the ash stinging her eyes, saw the black handprinted flyer stuck to the stones of the alley where Cullen had taken her, and felt the same numbness reach into her ribcage to snap the tethers of feeling away from her heart.

If she hadn’t waited...

“And Dorian Pavus.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would just like to extend my deepest gratitude for everyone who has been reading along with this fic. Thank you! I think it is easy to get discouraged as a fanfic author and I am definitely not immune to the anxiety of it but it helps immesurably to know that there are people out there who are reading this and (hopefully?) enjoying it. Obviously I love comments and kudos like crack but I'm bad myself at commenting and being communicative with strangers on the internet. I totally get it and if you've read or bookmarked or done anything, you have my most appreciative thanks. Thank you!
> 
> The photograph propoganda is based on some historical precedent, as well as the terrible factory conditions. The deadliest industrial disaster occured in a shirtwaist factory in the U.S. in 1911. Also, I had to put a dig in for the stupid post-war 'harem pants' trend. Next chapter: we'll finally see the sanitorium AND another familiar DA character will make an appearance--one of my favorites :)


	20. The Patient and the Groundskeeper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off: over 200 kudos! I never expected this and I truly want to thank everyone for reading and leaving feedback. I'm beyond words. You're all wonderful and glorious and thank you times a million. I'm trying to think up a sort of short thank-you side-fic to celebrate but I haven't come up with anything good enough yet. I will certainly take any requests on Tumblr or in comments. I've never done prompts before but I would really love to try it to show my appreciation. Thank you again readers!

Besides being tight in the shoulders and long in the sleeves, the borrowed suit fit him well enough. Cullen adjusted the brim of his hat; padded inside with tissue paper so that it didn’t slide too low over his brow, and took in the full effect of his so-called disguise by his reflection in the gilt mirror.

Despite his initial (and intense) skepticism, he had to admit that the final result was...impressive. The false goatee softened the hard line of his jaw and if he hadn’t watched them attach it to his face, he would’ve had trouble believing it wasn’t the result of his own ill-advised foray into fashionable facial hair.

Bits of wax and some clever shading around his nose and cheeks smoothed out the jut of his cheekbones, making his face seem more rotund. He looked familiar enough on close examination but different in every way that mattered--as if they had diluted him with theatrical tricks; blurring angles and watering down hard lines. No one would suspect this Cullen Rutherford was the same man from the propoganda posters glorifying Ferelden’s victories in the war.  

No, he looked like the man he might have been in another life--academic, fastidious, soft. The sort of man who could answer his sister’s letters with responses full of a thousand dull details, a man who could sleep without having to convince himself that the rats crawling over his toes were only in his mind.

“Sera, wait--”

He heard rustling and then a thump.

“Shove off, like you aren't dying for a peek.”

The door swung open and Sera gave him a once-over while simultaneously fending off Adelina’s attempts to reach for the handle, “Missed your chance, he's decent.”

"Sera!" hissed the response.

Ignoring it, the elf marched in and snatched the pillow from the vanity stool to wave at him, “Stuff this up your shirt.”

Cullen balked, “If I do that, I’ll barely be able to button the vest.”

“That’s perfect” Sera cackled, “We’ll loosen some of them so they’ll pop off when you bend over to examine someone. Then you’ll _really_ fit in nice.”

Stepping inside the room, Adelina set down a leather physician’s bag she’d acquired from somewhere and turned to conceal her smile as she shut the door, “That is a bit of an exaggeration.”

“Andraste’s tits, is not, remember? Nearly took out your eye and tried blaming you for it. As if some elfy witch curse made his clothes two-sizes small, the prick.”

Sera spun on Cullen and nearly pummeled him with the pillow in the process, “That’s another thing--act like a prick.”

Sighing, he snatched the velvet cushion flying back in forth in front of his nose and began undoing the buttons of the vest while tugging the tails of his shirt out from his trousers.

“Just so! You're a natural,” Sera smirked, obviously pleased with that set-up,”You’ll probably need to undo your belt too.”

Someone coughed--Adelina; looking flustered and suddenly intrigued with the details of the thick Orlesian rug. His hands stilled on his belt buckle. Maker, he was practically undressing in front of her.

Flushing, he turned away to the wall to undo his belt and slipped the cushion under his clothes. Cullen redid his belt and buttoned up his shirt and vest over the pillow. Worsted wool strained over his stomach but the buttons did not seem ready to fly off if he bent over. It was rather uncomfortable; the cushion had a large decorative button at the center that was now forming an indentation in his abdomen.

Cullen turned to present himself for their final inspection.

“It’ll do.” Sera said, barely glancing his way, “I’ll go nab our cabs.”

Adelina stepped forward from the door to let her through, “Your bandages will need changing.”

Strips of white peeked out from her ill-fitting gloves.

Cullen thanked her and she waved it off, rummaging through the drawers of the vanity.

“Here we go,” she flashed a triumphant smile his way. In her hands was an ornate bottle of cut glass topped with a golden cap and a tasseled bulb. Inside sloshed pale pink liquid.

“Perfume?” he asked, confused. Did he really smell as bad as Sera insisted earlier? And did that _really_ necessitate the use of lady’s perfume? He hardly thought so.

Unscrewing the cap, she began to dump the contents onto the strips of linen. The faint whiff of lavender lingering in the air turned overwhelming. He was suddenly dizzy with it.

“It's not the best disinfectant but it works in a pinch,” she explained.

"What sort of pinches do you find yourself in that require the medicinal applications of lady's perfume?"

"The normal sort--” her impish smile caught his breath in his chest. “Risking life and limb to claim the last tiny cake left on the tea tray."

She bent over his hand and the loose fingertips of her gloves skimmed over his knuckles. Proper ladies wore gloves in public--he knew that. He had not known that the social convention still applied to ladies who carried pistols, traversed chantry rooftops, crafted disguises, and consorted with tiny, foul-mouthed women. But apparently so, as she never seemed without a pair; although this set was clearly not her own. Senses clouded with lavender, he imagined capturing the ends of those ill-fitting gloves and gently tugging them away.

An impulse born out of curiosity he told himself. But like a wrapped parcel coming apart, the image unraveled the loose threads of restraint and sense from more just like it; his thumb pressed into her palms, his rapt fingers mapping out all the details hidden away from the prying world behind supple leather

She glanced upward and met his eyes beneath the sooty fringe of her lashes, her fingers suddenly fumbling against the ragged bandages wrapping his palm. Despite her uncharacteristic clumsiness, linen strips unfurled and spun down to the floor, unheeded by either of them.

Electric lamplight skimmed warm fingers across her cheekbones, the shadow of her eyelashes dancing in its gold cast like moth wings beating bravely towards the brightness that would burn. It wasn’t just curiosity. He knew that. Or impulse or whim or whatever flimsy veneer he tried to paint over the truth. It was more--an incandescent filament humming beneath the lies he told himself.  If he let it, it would transfix him, consume him.  

His restraint snapped back into place, the stinging recoil snatching him back into a realm of safety and sense. Immediately, the room muted, its electric lights less dazzling.

“I’ll see to it.” he said, brusque as he pulled his hands away from hers.

“Oh…” she straightened, stiff and awkward. Brightness guttered and dimmed in her eyes but her smile remained fixed. ”Of course, you are the medical professional after all.”

Traitorous words clamored up in his throat. But she was already turning away to gather up his clothes--folded up and set on the vanity top--to place in the empty physician’s bag. So he said nothing and finished dressing his hands with the fragrant linen.

It was unlikely that she’d want her handkerchief back now that it was already spotted with blood, but he set it down onto the vanity anyway instead of tossing it into the small wastebin with the rest of the bloodied bandages. Salt and cold water might take out the stains. Cullen picked it up.

“Cabs are here,” Sera barked from the door. “Hurry it up.”

Adelina nodded and tugged at the fingertips of her gloves to no avail, they only slipped down again right after.

“Don’t forget your bag,” she reminded him.

She paused at the door to say something to Sera and before he realized what he was doing, he’d already slipped her handkerchief into the inner pocket of his borrowed coat.

* * *

“Quit it yeah?” she snapped at him, “You’re making me jittery.”

Cullen wound the watch chain tighter and narrowed his eyes as the openly hostile woman seated across from him in the cab. “Could you clarify _why_ exactly you’re joining me?”

Surely, she didn’t think he’d let her accompany him inside the ward? Maker, who knows what havoc she would wreck. It was out of the question.

Rather than answer, she slouched further down into the seat cushions, crossing and uncrossing the feet she had rested onto the opposite seat right beside his thigh. She kicked him in the process. On purpose, if he had to hazard a guess.

“Sorry!”

Her grin looked nothing close to sorry and Cullen took one deep long-suffering breath and pointedly looked out the window to avoid the prospect of further conversation.

Which was the wrong response, he realized too late. Being ignored was something this woman did not tolerate well and she took his dismissal like a dueling glove thrown down to the floor of the carriage. Her foot found his thigh again and she very purposefully dug in with the (thank the Maker for small blessings) flat heel of her shoe.

“Ay! So what’s your story?”

He did not glance from the window in the vague hope that she’d lose interest in sporting with his temper so long as he kept it in check.

“Pardon?” he asked--more instruction than apology.

“Your _storrryyyy_ ,” she drawled out in a way that made his jaw tense with the effort to keep his retort in check.

“You got the tremors. ‘S why you fiddle with your watch. You think people don’t notice then if your hands shake yeah?”

Immediately he unwrapped his fingers from the chain and found himself at the crux of a stare so sharp it glittered in the dim of the cab like broken glass.

“Lots of stories these days,” she said. “Lots of things to get in your veins.”

Down came her legs from the seat and she leaned forward, propping her elbows up on her knees.

“I’m not--”

“ _I’m_ not stupid so stuff it.” Her fingers interlocked beneath her chin. “Used to see a lot more like you until…” She laughed--a bawdy, uneven chuckle. “Until we got those pissbuckets what they deserved in the end. Andraste’s blessed tits that was brilliant. Found the mattress and everything.”

Cullen had no idea what she meant but was grateful that the conversation had steered away from him. “The mattress?”

“Mattresses, that’s where they keep their money. You think that lot use banks?” She snorted, then looked disappointed. “It wasn’t actually a mattress though. Socks. Couldn’t wash the stink off but money is money even if it reeks.”

For one long, blissful moment, she drifted into a thoughtful silence and Cullen fisted his hand inside his coat’s inner pocket. As if with a mind of its own, his thumb found the crumpled handkerchief and traced the embroidered initials A and T. Through the window, he saw the road give way to a manicured lawn split down the middle to form a graveled drive.

He saw it, hulking at the end of the drive like a bird of prey watching the road for carrion. The sanitorium.

“I’ll gut you if you put her in this place.” Sera told him before tossing off a careless shrug. “Only fair to warn you.”

It was quite easily the most apathetic delivery of a death threat he’d ever received.

* * *

Cullen stood in the middle of the drive and sanitorium looming over him; a sinister shadow bleached bone white in the glare of the early morning sun. Despite the chill, his brow was suddenly damp with sweat.

“Maker, look at his face,” Farris taunted. “You’re a long way from the farm, aren’t you?” He pulled a vacant expression as if to mock Cullen for being a slow, stupid country boy and while he was doing that, Annalise shoved into him, sending him sprawling into the gravel.

“You’re a long way from the stables, but that doesn’t stop you from being a horse's arse,” she crowed, flashing Cullen her crooked tooth as she grinned.

Bevel helped Farris up from the drive with one burly forearm that Farris slapped away indignantly. Annalise rolled her eyes towards Cullen at Bevel’s indiscriminate kindness and Cullen didn’t have the strength to close his eyes and wish for her to vanish. It felt wrong to bottle them back up again--if he even could. Lyrium deprivation had pried up all the stoppers, loosened all the seals, and no one stayed put in his mind anymore.

“Can I help you my friend?” a voice called out. It carried a strong Antivan accent and Cullen spied the owner by the hedges. “Perhaps you are lost?”

The man--a deeply tanned elf with silvery blonde hair tucked up into a cap--lowered his gardening shears and flashed a grin at Cullen. “I think you must be, judging from your face this moment. You look like you’ve just made a tremendous mistake.”

He chuckled and the three dark tattoos curving up the side of his left temple crinkled up with the motion. “You are looking for Lady Monteagle’s country manor, yes? It is much further up the road.”

“No, I thank you, I am not lost. Only taking a moment to regain my bearings.”

Before he could say more, the cab door opened and Sera’s head peered out from the interior. “Get on with it! What are you waiting for? A bloody invitation?”

Easy grin still on his lips, the groundsman appraised the both of them from his vantage spot by the shrubbery. “Those who don’t come here by mistake are usually invited...of course, the invitation is not one they have any choice in accepting,” he ducked his head down and Cullen could see nothing of his expression under the brim of cap. Then he tipped his chin back up, all seriousness. “But it is obvious you fall into neither category, so I take it you are a doctor? I am Zevran, the groundskeeper. May I be of service and take your bag?”

Zevran escorted Cullen to the main entrance of the administration wing--the only segment of the facility accessible to the outside world. Doffing his cap towards Cullen and setting his bag down onto the marbled foyer, the groundskeeper took his leave to attend to the hedges. A solitary Chantry nurse manned the receiving desk and she watched him with timid, terrified eyes.

She barely even glanced at his card, partially obscured with his thumb, as he introduced himself as a physician traveling from Denerim and insisted that she take him to the patient who had just been admitted.

“Ser--Doctor…” the woman was young and her shoulders were quivering so much beneath her overly starched uniformed that he swore the fabric might crack. “He has been sedated. The man was…” she glanced behind him and Cullen noticed scorch marks curling up the walls. “Difficult. He will remain sedated until the electrical current procedure can be performed in two weeks.”

“Did he say anything before he was sedated? Any names?”

Shaking her head so vigorously, her nurse's’ cap listed to the side, she said, “I was not...one of the other nurses helped restrain him, perhaps I could fetch her for you?”

Cullen nodded and she took off, as if grateful to escape him. With nothing else to do but wait, Cullen ambled over to the corridor branching out from the open foyer and peeked through the rippled glass panel of the closest door. Someone had left the lamp on in their office.

Just then, the door opened and Cullen found himself standing toe to toe with a glaring woman.

“Mind telling me why you’re looming in my doorway?” she demanded, crossing her arms over a white coat that had seen better days; the collar had been singed clean off.

He recalled the name etched into the glass with sudden, awful clarity. Resisting the urge to groan aloud, Cullen tipped his felt brim towards her.

“Dr. Agatha, may I speak with you a moment?”

Bristling, she narrowed her eyes at him for a half minute before recognition dawned in her eyes. The pseudonym and false story he’d been spinning would do him no good. Void take him, of all the bad luck.

“It regards a Chantry investigation into your facility,” he elaborated, settling for the truth. Not that he had a choice otherwise.

Alarm flashed across her face. “Come into my office.”

* * *

“Coffee?” she offered and Cullen shook his head as he took a seat in one of the leather chairs facing her desk.

Pouring herself a cup, she produced a silver flask from her jacket and added a liberal amount before turning to him and offering up that as well. “Whiskey?”

“No. Thank you.”

She took a sip of her coffee and examined him, eyes lingering on the bulge of the cushion over his belt, “ I almost didn’t recognize you. You’ve certainly settled into civilian life...comfortably.”  
  
Cullen shifted in the chair in the vain attempt to dislodge the cushion button from his stomach. No luck. “You may telephone The Golden Rind and speak to Seeker Pentaghast if you wish.”

She waved his suggestion off. “No need, I’ve heard rumors that you were in town accompanying the Divine’s right hand...well, the previous Divine’s right hand. Figured it would only be a matter of time before--I just hoped I was wrong.”

The chair groaned beneath her as she slumped down into it, the stiffness of her motion testifying to the wound that had taken her away from the front lines two weeks before they were ordered to retreat from Lothering. She’d been one of Meredith’s more zealous subordinates--as he had been. He wondered if she still was. She hadn’t been there to see their commander’s final moments.

“If you’re here that means it’s going to happen here too doesn’t it? Some of our patients are showing symptoms of resistance already. We’ve been resorting to deep sleep and electrical current therapy to deal with it.”

Cullen fought the bile burning at the back of his tongue. “Have you? Were there many adverse reactions to the potassium bromide?”

“Yes.” She frowned, unconsciously dropped her hand to the bulge of the gun beneath her white coat. “It is not an ideal treatment course but we lack funding for more electrical equipment. This facility is far over capacity for patients.”

 _Not an ideal treatment course._ Digging his nails into the leather arm of her chair, Cullen forced calm into his voice. “How far over?”

“The patient population has doubled twice over in the past several years. New patients every week--mostly immigrants fleeing compulsory exams. But by the time I started, that had stopped. In fact, we haven’t had a new patient for some time now--until tonight, that is.”

“He’s been sedated already?” Cullen asked.

Agatha nodded, downing the last dregs of her coffee and whiskey. “Yes. The man was raving. Kept shouting about our insolence.” She laughed. “Tevinters.”

“He was Tevinter? Did he give his name?”

“Oh he gave his name.” She was flushed now, already tipsy from the whiskey. “Shouted it over and over as if who he was made any difference. Livius Erimond.”

Livius Erimond, of Erimond Brokerage Firm no doubt. He wondered how Adelina Trevelyan had come to discover a mage turned financial broker with ties to The Hand. Something niggled in the back of his mind, halting his thoughts like a stuck gear clicking uselessly in place. He was forgetting something, of that he was certain.

“Did he mention anyone else? Any accomplices?”

“Afraid not, after he nearly burned me to death, I had the nurse inject him with enough bromide to keep him unconscious for a day. Didn’t speak much after that.”

Cullen frowned. A large single dosage like that...   
  
“Do you need to examine any of the patients? I’ve done so myself but I can’t seem to find any link. I’ve suggested that we discontinue the medication altogether and rely solely on deep sleep therapy.”  
  
Exactly what Dr. Greagoir had done at Kinloch.   
  
He stood. “I will need to see the patient for myself.”

“Of course,” she said.

Snatching the nervous Chantry nurse from before, she led him past the receiving desk towards the wall of iron wrought bars--engraved with delicate decorative scrollwork as if in a vain attempt to distract from the unpleasant nature of imprisoning hundreds of people for their own wellbeing. The nurse unlocked the door set into the bars and then the second and third doors set into the two gates behind the first.

The ward was painted cheerful yellow, floral patterns set into the tile. A few residents milled about the hall aimlessly, turning curious eyes towards the three of them as they made their way towards a set of metal double doors that led down to the basement.

Ostwick’s sanitorium had been fitted with electrical power and the incandescent bulbs buzzed and flickered above their heads as they descended to the levels below. It set his teeth on edge. He could almost smell the ozone lingering in the air, see the light sputtering as it spilled beneath the door, hear the cries of pain.

When the reached the basement level, the difference in purpose was obvious. This ward had no cheerful paint or floral tile and it was lined with doors made with riveted steel instead of wood.

“Is this ward fully occupied?” Cullen asked while the nurse produced her heavy ring of keys and inserted one into the padlock fastened to the door’s crossbar.

“Yes. Two or three to a room.” Agatha smiled as the nurse lifted the bar and opened the door with the shriek of metal over tile. “It isn’t as if they’re in a position to complain about the cramped conditions.”

He didn’t find that amusing at all but said nothing as he entered the room.

Despite being heavily sedated, Livius Erimond was strapped down to the metal bed frame. Cullen knelt beside the bed and immediately checked for a pulse. It took a moment for him to feel it, lethargic and faint against his finger.

“What was the dosage of the bromide?” he asked.

“800 mg.”

Cullen frowned, parting the man’s eyelids and listening to the sluggish cadence of his breath. “Have you administered anymore?”

“N--no Ser,” the nurse answered, trembling beside Agatha. “His next injection is scheduled for tonight.”

“I’ve had the nurses check his condition periodically. His pulse is slow but stable” Agatha gave the man a glance that took Cullen back to churned up mud, cold trenches, and the averted eyes of the mage conscripts as she barked out punishment in the guise of orders.

“Potassium bromide is toxic, doctor” he snapped, “you risk your patient’s life.”

“As he risked mine.” Agatha quipped.

She was still Meredith’s woman. Beneath the sneer in her eyes, he saw the familiar gleam of fear trussed up to look like power.

Cullen stood. “I will need the use of your telephone.”

* * *

Josephine Montiliyet’s voice came over the line tinny and concerned, “Cullen! Has something happened? Your room was in such disarray--.”

Guilt suckered him in the ribcage. They must have attempted to rouse him once the citywide alarm went up. He’d intended to return before they woke but Ostwick had a knack so far for ruining his plans.

“No, no, I’m perfectly fine,” he assured her and then repeated himself when the line went so silent, he’d thought they’d lost connection.

“I see,” she said at last, voice strange.

“I'm--”

There was a rustling of static and garbled voices from the other end. Cullen could barely distinguish her voice from the other end, it sounded as if she were speaking far away from the phone.

“Josephine?”

“Josephine asked that I speak with you instead...” Solas’s voice replied as soon as the static died out--ah, not static at all, Cullen realized, she must’ve handed the receiver over to Solas with some force. Or dropped it entirely.

“...due to the fact that she is furious with you,” Solas continued with just a breath of amusement lingering around the words.  
  
“Deservedly so,” Cullen said by way of an apology, “I’ll explain it all once I return but that won’t be for several hours. I will be questioning a man in relation to the fire that started in the financial district but first, I must treat him for a toxic reaction to sedatives.”

He waited for Solas to repeat his words for Josephine and heard her voice, distant but indignant, “Cassandra is already halfway to the Trevelyan manor to seize their financial records, he must return! What in the world is he--”

“Josephine asks that you return,” Solas said.   
  
“Cassandra is going to the Trevelyan manor?” Cullen asked, alarm winding tight around his throat.

“Yes, she attempted to find you first but felt that it could not be delayed any longer. One of the buildings that was destroyed in the flames was an investment firm involved in the Trevelyan land sale transactions.”

Erimond Brokerage Firm. Of course, why hadn’t he made the connection immediately?

Oblivious to Cullen’s revelations, Solas continued speaking, “--may be attempting to destroy documents and other evidence.”

He leaned against the wall of the hallway, clutching the receiver tightly. Josephine was dictating a message to Solas--something regarding a hunting party in the country--but a flash of gold at the end of the foyer caught Cullen’s eye.

It was a woman. Not a nurse or a doctor judging from the lack of a uniform or coat. Not a patient either given that she was standing on the wrong side of the bars. Blonde hair cascaded loose over her shoulders, fluttering behind her as she moved.

Something about her movement unsettled him deeply. He could not see her face but adrenaline was already crackling through his veins, tasting like copper on his tongue. Cullen dropped the receiver and it dangled by the cord, forgotten. Around him, the walls constricted.

Solona Amell turned and fixed her impossibly blue eyes on him.

“Ay! What’s taking so long?”

A hand settled on his shoulder and Cullen spun to fend off the attack. Sera ducked low, twisting her body to try to leverage her arm out of his grip. He felt more than heard the strained popping of her joints and released her with a horrified gasp. Not expecting it, she fell back, landing unceremoniously on her backside.

“You bloody idiot, who’d you think I was? A bloody demon?” she shouted, “Nearly broke my arm off.”

He stammered out an apology without looking at her. Instead, his eyes fixed on the other end of the foyer. It was empty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delayed posting guys! I (idiotically) took a grad-level protein chemistry course to 'keep busy' and it started last week so I've been so stressed out, this chapter just sat there, missing four or five paragraphs that I just could NOT get out for some reason. Thankfully, the block didn't last, although my schedule is still on the insane side. Okay, now on to the historical references:  
> -Potassium bromide 'sleep therapy' was used during 1900s psychiatric care, as was 'electrical current therapy' (these are the official terms). The use of weeks/months of sedation to 'treat' mental disorders (with overdose side-effects) is beyond horrific to me. I wanted to incorporate early psychiatric care in this fic because, while I dislike the association of mages with those who struggle with mental illness, I do think that the *treatment* of both by society at large do share a lot of chilling parallels. I also think early psychiatric care shares a lot of parallels in regards to abuse, the unecessary pathologizing of healthy individuals, and 'good' intentions/theories with terrible consequences.  
> -The sanatorium design is based off of early Edwardian asylums, which did have basement isolation wards and let me tell you, those pictures are insanely creepy.  
> -I plucked Templar Agatha up from DA:2. Our tour of obscure side-characters continues!  
> -Finally, Zevran! I've been planning his appearance for ages and it's finally hereee :D


	21. The Rescued and the Cursed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I liveeee! I cannot believe how much time has passed since I last updated but now that I'm finally (officially) done with classes and just sitting around twiddling my thumbs between interviews for grad school, I hope to make regular weekly updates (wouldn't that be a nice change from my terrible schedule?). I've been going back and compulsively editing previous chapters for clarity, missing words, grammar (which I am terrible at in the first place), variations in spelling and wow, am I discouraged by my attention to detail. I really, really, need to find a beta-reader. On another note...country house party! I'm excited for it :D
> 
> A thousand gratified hugs to anyone who has stuck with this fic despite its numerous errors and my lack of timely chapters.

The zither was dismally out of tune but she plucked it anyway with rambling, trembling fingers while Iron Bull downed another pint. She’d already told him the important details for the job. All that was left to do was sort out the payment. She was not looking forward to that.

“So how are you managing all this?” Bull asked, not paying attention to the liquid sloshing out of his mug and down onto the filthy bar top, “Trevelyan fortunes on the up and up?”

“Hardly,” Adelina snorted, strumming a few off-key verses from a familiar tavern song. It helped to keep her fingers steady. Meanwhile, the easy warmth had left Bull’s smile.

“Look boss,” he swiped at his damp chin with a forearm as wide as her thigh, “We’ve known each other a long time but business is business. I can’t do you any favors.”  
  
“I’m glad to hear that,” she said, feeling along the body for a seam in the wood with her free hand while the other continued to turn a jaunty tune into something eerie and mournful--99 Bottles in the key of F sharp. Not one of her better compositions, but perhaps one of the few she’d come up with on her own if Solas’s comment about her spirit muse were anything to go by.  What a depressing indication of her natural talents.

She caught the eye of the barkeep furiously wiping down the counter across the room. If his hostile scowl and out-of-character attention to cleanliness were anything to go by, he knew exactly who she was--and he was not pleased to have her as a customer.

Tugging up her shawl, she met Bull’s eyes, “I don’t want any favors. Strictly business.”

Favors fell into that unsteady ground of friendship and trust. And she was too unsure, had stumbled into hidden pits of deception and betrayal too often as of late--still never learning. Always always trusting when she shouldn’t, always the naive little girl too eager to believe in something and someone.

In a smooth motion, she flipped the zither around, wedged her gloved fingertips in the hairline groove signifying the edge of the false bottom and slid it out to reveal a stack of banknotes in the compartment. The scent of feet wafted up from the pinewood; she’d never been able to wash it out of the money.

Bull raised an amused eyebrow, “You’d make a fine smuggler, we’ve taught you well. ”

She laughed at that, closing the compartment and setting the instrument on the table between them. A group of men entered the bar, raucous and already stinking of grain alcohol. Adelina stopped laughing and hunched down over the table, trying to make herself as inconspicuous as possible--a hard thing to do with a massive one-eyed qunari seated across the table from her.

Catching everything, Bull’s good eye darted back towards the newcomers, then fixed on her with a look she couldn’t quite read. It was soft, protective even, and strange juxtaposed against his roughened features.

“You know boss, we still have everything set up for your _other_ job. Say the word and you’ll be in Rivain in time for high tea.”

He held her gaze for a long moment before glancing down at the zither meaningfully. He knew. He knew she was using the money she’d set aside to leave Ostwick; her emergency fund secreted away over the years from her share of Red Jenny profits. It was the portion she hadn’t funnel back into the Trevelyan household account--just enough to pay off the right contacts (arranged by Bull), enough to turn the right heads so she could start a new life away from the threat of the sanitoria.

She pretended not to take his meaning, fooling neither of them, “I don’t feel much like traveling this time of year.”

“Shame. Never pegged you for a martyr.”

At the bar, someone dropped a glass and the sound of it breaking cut through the sound of drunken men.

“I’m not,” Adelina said, struggling for some explanation. There were no good ones. He was right, she should be on a boat, she should be running. For years, she told herself she could leave the second things started looking bad. And now that it was bad--more than bad, she was staying.

Finally, she gave up and laughed--the fact that it was weak and unconvincing was not lost on her, “My motives aren’t that altruistic.”

Although, for the life of her, she couldn’t put a name to them, those fleeting shadows rooting her down from the depths of her mind--vague impressions of feelings too tangled together to distinguish clearly. They felt like gloves against her palms. Smelled like blood. And...Maker forgive her foolishness, sounded like a verse whispered into her hair by a man she’d only met a few days ago. Whatever they were, they didn’t feel like the sort of motivations martyrs had. Not Andraste certainly--too small for a woman immortalized as the massive golden statue they all sang the litanies to.

The bar was deafening now, drowning out her convoluted self-examination. She was too tired, too tired for this. Her decision was made, did it really matter why she made it? Adelina frowned, reaching out for her own beer--sitting untouched on the table. Bull, strangely enough, shot to his feet at her movement and before she could realize why he was lunging for her, a thud shuddered through her skull. Bull called for Krem and everyone was shouting all at once but she heard none of it as she slipped, with ease, into the welcoming embrace of unconsciousness.

* * *

 

The sky was broken above her and beneath her the ground curved to form a shallow pit grown over with weeds. They disguised the grave well and it wasn’t until her ankle twisted beneath her that she realized where she’d stepped. It was too late to move by then. Death clutched at her from the ground, pawing at her hand, voices scrabbling over her skin like ancient fingernails. The charred fingers of the aravels reached towards her from across the meadow turned mass grave. Or were they reaching for the ones buried beneath her feet?  

She should've listened and stayed away from this place. It was a mistake to come, carrying the stories like poison in her stomach. They were true. Knowing that didn’t make it better. Truth was a hollow prize when your name was death, a cry on the lips of an murderous mob. Her arm shivered and pulsed, bringing her to her knees. They were right about her after all. She was a cursed thing.

She writhed in pain, grass wet beneath her knees, then smooth and hard--wood.   
  
Blood dripped, a slow rivulet dripping from her useless shoulder down to the hardwood. Sera was unconscious as were most of the others. She saw Charade crumpled up by the stairs leading up to the stage, unmoving, gun in hand. Her own gun dangled, useless at her side. She had no more bullets for it and even if she did they only deflected off the magical barrier anyway. The mages stepped forward, drawing closer, and the air around them hummed.

Mr. Tynne looked on, face drawn, horrified. It had gone wrong, so wrong. The Hand would take him after they finished with her. Then, they would finish teaching him to regret seeking out help by burning the theatre he built to the ground. She couldn’t help him after all. She couldn’t help anyone. She was misfortune, she was death, she was the cursed girl of Ostwick. Mr. Tynne doubled over, skin rippling, stretching and distorting into something horrific. Something inhuman.

 _Rip. Tear. Rend._   
  
The meadow, the grave, the sky hummed like a terrible song in her bones. Impossible to silence. Impossible to ignore. She screamed and opened the sky.

Something whipped across her cheek, the sharp sudden sting waking her so abruptly, her limbs were still thrashing out to fend off the thing that used to be Mr. Tynne...or was it the demon stalking towards her through the weeds?

Someone slapped her again, hard enough to stun and her hands stopped clawing at nothing.

“I don’t think you should be striking someone with a concussion, Miss.”

“Please refrain from telling me how to care for my own sister. Just because you rescued her from an angry mob doesn’t give you permission to pry.”

Adelina groaned and brought a hand up to rub at her stinging cheek, her thoughts a sluggish dribble squeezed from the dull throb of her skull, “Cora...stop slapping me.”

“Well, _someone_ had to rouse you--all that screaming and writhing around” Cora sniffed, the implicit statement of, ‘ _I_ would never be caught dead in such a spectacle’ conveyed in one pristine breath of air.

Adelina didn’t dare try to open her eyes or sit up. Talking was enough to make the world dip and sway beneath her, as if she had woken on the deck of a ship...well, perhaps she had, she had no idea, “Where am I?”

“The chantry...I...I didn’t know where else to take you, Miss,” the man hesitated, unwilling to say more and Adelina realized it was Krem speaking. A thousand questions pressed against the raw edges of her mind. Meanwhile, an awkward silence fell over the three of them.

Cora was the one to break it, “Why are you still here? Do you expect some sort of compensation for your good deed?” she demanded of Krem.

“Cora,” Adelina croaked, “Could you go find Rosalina?”  
  
She could actually  _hear_ Cora give Krem a once-over. Whatever she saw apparently did not pass muster, “I’m not about to leave you alone with this...stranger.”

Somehow she made the word ‘stranger’ sound insulting, “Anyway, Rosalina isn’t here. You’re fortunate Mama sent me here to find you, otherwise there’d be no one to care for you properly.”

Properly being two slaps to the face. Adelina thought she could do well without Coralina’s brand of care. It also looked like her sister would absolutely not leave her alone with Krem--which meant he couldn’t say anything about what really happened. No doubt, he’d spun a fiction for Cora--one that didn’t involve them knowing each other and hopefully one that did not include the part of town she’d been in.

The fact that her presence was the last thing anyone wanted or needed was lost on Cora, “I hope you know I have better things to do than run around the whole of Ostwick trying to find you. Now I won’t have any time to find an alternative to the lovely fennec trim the furrier refused to sell me--I mean, that he sold out of. My new riding jacket is absolutely dull without it. I suppose I’ll just have to wear my old one and let you use the new suit since there’s no time for you to have your own done before tomorrow.”

Against her better instincts, Adelina opened her eyes in one rapid blink. Dusty light needled through her nerves, too bright, setting off a faster tempo of throbbing around her temples. She groaned and pressed her palms against her eyes--too late to block it out. After a moment, she managed to ask, “Tomorrow?”

“Don’t tell me you forgot. Papa’s been polishing his hunting rifles for the past week.”

Adelina groaned again, for an entirely different reason, “I don’t need to use your riding suit, I won’t be going.”  
  
“Mama says you shall. She was insistent after that dreadful Pentaghast woman appeared on our doorstep to interrogate all of us on your whereabouts this morning.”

The martyred gasp was a bit much, Adelina thought privately to herself. Cora had cultivated quite a flair for the dramatic and she was employing it to full effect now, ”I wouldn’t put it past her to carry thumbscrews on her person wherever she goes. I daresay we were lucky to escape with our limbs intact.”

A horse whinnied nearby and Adelina realized she was not actually inside the chantry, but immediately outside it; in a carriage judging from the sway of the floor beneath her as the skittish mare set the springs into motion.

“Oy, what’s this?” Sera demanded the very moment Cora exclaimed, “Captain Rutherford!”

Disconcertingly _sticky_ fingers pressed hot against her cheeks and Adelina did her best to bat them away without moving too much. Krem took the opportunity to lean close and whisper, “You took quite a knock at the tavern, my lady. We sorted them out, don’t worry, but you should--”

“You blighted idiot.” Sera hissed, probing hands finding the lump in Adelina’s skull. The pain flared and she cried out despite herself.

“You couldn’t keep low for one day could you? Always doing something stupid--”

Krem growled, indignant, and there were sounds like scuffling as the carriage swayed more beneath her. He pulled her away from Sera’s grip, ”First that one, now you?”

“What’s going on here?” Cullen demanded, one more voice in the confusion. She wasn’t sure if the alarm in his voice was real or simply the result of her concussion.

Not learning after the first time, Adelina attempted to sit up and open her eyes. Distantly, she heard herself utter a highly unladylike curse as the carriage dropped out from beneath her, submerging her into the pulse of blood thundering agony through her temples.  
  
Before her vision spotted over, she saw Cora, who had been clinging to Cullen's arm, gasp aloud and swoon prettily into his arms. It was an artful display that had their mother’s handiwork all over it. Let it never be said that Lady Trevelyan neglected the instruction of her daughters in the arts of fainting.


	22. The Vengeful and the Shamed

Cullen woke with a start, not realizing he had nodded off in the first place. Whispers filled the cell; a low torrent of fragmented thoughts flowing from the lips of the man struggling weakly against the straps tying him to the cot. Gut-wrenching panic descended before he remembered he was an ocean away from Kinloch’s isolation ward. But knowing that didn’t stop the current of adrenaline electrifying his fingers into a series of nervous twitches.

He wasn’t alone in the room. A nurse had come in while he slept. She stood with her back to him, a ruff of straw-colored hair escaping from beneath her white cap.

“He’s been at it for ages,” she said. “Rubbish to the last drop.”

She leaned over the cot to examine the man and her nurse’s skirt--too long for her--trailed the floor. _Not_ a nurse. He narrowed his eyes at her.

“What are you doing here?” Cullen demanded. “You were supposed to take the cab back to town.”

Sera snorted. “You mean after I caught you out? You think I’m simple?”

“How did you even get in…”

If she was here, then they never needed him to get to Erimond. So why did they send him here? To test him? To distract him? Something worse? Had it been a mistake to trust her...them? Wary, he rose to his feet, ignoring the pinched nerves flaring back to life in his legs.

His guardedness delighted her (not the response he’d expected but then, he’d found there was no point in expecting anything from her outside of a headache) and she cackled.“You can go back to your nap, if I wanted to do something I’d’ve done it already wouldn’t I?”

True, if she intended to lure him into some sort of trap, it would’ve sprung before he’d woken. The thought was not a comforting one and he said as much under his breath. Sera caught it and shrugged as if to absolve herself from his completely justified concern over her deception. Maker, he’d never met anyone more deserving of a throttle--and he’d known the Hawke siblings.

“So why am I even here then? You were clearly able to infiltrate the facility without my help.”

Sera considered him, her nurse's’ cap too big and falling askew atop her head, revealing the pointed tip of a previously concealed ear. “I had your help, you just didn’t know you were helping. Anyway, I would still be out in the lobby keeping my eye on you--not literally, yeah? I mean making sure you didn’t try anything. And I’d _still_ be there if you hadn’t been up to something funny. ”

“What are you--I wasn't _up to_ anything. ”

She shrugged as if she didn’t actually care overmuch. “So you say. Adelily’s free to trust you but doesn’t mean _I_ have to trust you. So I came up with a plan that meant I didn’t have to.”

So she was acting alone then. A feeling too close to relief for his comfort made his hand itch for the pocket of his coat. Unfortunately, it was all too quickly chased away again by the sobering fact that Adelina Trevelyan’s intent did not remedy the fact that her compatriot was here and already proposing something ridiculous.

“Now that’s you’re awake, you can help me interrogate.” She laughed unexpectedly. “Didn’t even plan that. Makes the whole thing sound like a laugh. You got thumbscrews?”

Cullen looked upwards towards the ceiling in a quick plea to the Maker for a hidden reserve of inner strength. Between gritted teeth, he said, “You can’t interrogate him. He isn’t even aware of his surroundings...and I don’t carry thumbscrews on my person for that matter.”

Sera looked askance at the cot and its occupant. “Can’t think of a rhyme for thumbscrews anyway. Pews? News? See. We’ll just have to get inventive.”

“With the rhyming or interrogation?” Cullen deadpanned. He had no intention of letting her do anything to the man. But she was so difficult to predict that he couldn’t even be sure if she actually intended to.

“Both, obviously.”

Oblivious to the both of them, Erimond continued to speak to nothing. The words were clearer now, less garbled together. That was a good sign about his improvement, even if when put together, they still didn’t make any sense. He wasn’t an optimist but he’d learned to take what little hope there was to be found in the miserable steel and concrete silence of the isolation ward. Even if the hope was for someone who had nearly burned a city to a ground. He did not know this patient but what he did know gave him cause enough for loathing. 

“We’re not doing anything to a man who isn’t even conscious.” He  _would not_   let hatred cloud his actions. Regardless of whether or not this man deserved whatever Sera had in mind for him, Cullen could not let himself be that person again.

“Well aren’t you a stick in the mud? Pretty high and mighty for someone who did this to him in the first place.”

“I had nothing to do with his current state,” Cullen said.

Her ratty boot reached out from beneath the pristine hem of her stolen nurse’s uniform to nudge the leg of the cot. “You’re a doctor right? This is what you doctors do.”

“I’m not a doctor anymore.” Andraste’s tears, he was wasting his breath.  
  
“But you were.”

“Yes, I was but--”

“Well there you go. Maybe you didn’t do it to _this_ one but you know, can’t be going on your high horse about this stuff. Makes you a bit of an ass.”

Cullen had no words. There _was_ a time when he thought any measure was worth preventing the massacre he’d witnessed on the shores of Lake Calenhad. The medical student who had balked at sedation and electrical therapy, who argued for alternative treatments and bought a patient a set of paints to keep her out of the isolation ward--he was all too easily set aside for a man who had let fear and authority enslave his conscience. But even that man, Captain Cullen Rutherford of the Queen’s Special Operations Brigade...even he’d felt something. It was something Commander Stannard had classified as moral weakness; dangerous sentimentality that would only lead to disastrous leniency. The _afflicted_ soldiers conscripted to their special task force battalion--plucked from sanatoria across Ferelden--were not to be shown the same consideration as the rest of their comrades in arms. They could not be treated like people.

Meredith was quick to stamp out such displays of weakness in the medical officers--sometimes with a firing squad. Near the end of the war, there were days when he thought the struggle to defeat his guilt and shame, twisted as they were on each other--shame over shame, guilt over guilt--might drive him to madness. Perhaps some days it had.

Those were bad but the worst days were to come. In the woods around Lothering, he made a choice that upended everything without any thought as to how long it would take for him to navigate a strange new landscape no longer defined solely by Chantry rhetoric. It was a new world, full of questions. Questions were terrible things for the men and women raised in the lyceums. They shattered convictions and comforting illusions--leaving their askers to grope amid the rubble of dogma for a glimmer of truth.

“I’m taking your thoughtful silence as you agreeing with me,” Sera said, “good on you.”

Before he could respond, Erimond thrashed beside him, shouting so forcefully, spittle specked his lips,“You’ll regret this. _Fools_.”

”What are you on about now?” Sera drawled, not really expecting an answer judging from her bored expression.

Lurching against his bindings, Erimond fixed her with a white-eyed stare. “The Hand sleeps and waits. Waits to wake, waits for her.”

“Who?” she asked, excited now, “who are they waiting for?”

“The cursed girl. The little thief. You’ll regret what you’ve done to me when I slit her throat and take her power for myself.”

“Got it. Blah blah blah revenge, you’re very evil and scary.” Sera rolled her eyes. “Tell me where the rest of you are and we’ll finish the job.”

He slumped back into the cot, eyes fixed on the ceiling, and _laughed;_ glee rattling free from his throat like a cough.

“Revenge for what?” Cullen asked, after checking the sweat-damp pulse at the man’s throat. It was better. He might be fully aware in another day so long as the staff did not dose him again. There was nothing more he could do now that the man was out of danger. Nothing except sleep and pointlessly ruminate over his own regrets some more.

Sera shrugged. “He’s creepy and evil. Since when does creepy and evil need a what?”

She made to leave but he blocked the door. “Since I’ve done what was asked and still need answers.”

Scowling at him, she folded her arms across her chest. “ _Fine_. But keep up yeah, because I’m going to explain this faster than Adelily would. His lot is pissed because Adelily got us Friends involved in their business. Business being kidnapping and setting fires. Things got bad. We killed a couple of them and haven’t seen them around since. Till now.”

“We?” Cullen asked. “So they’re after your whole group?”

“Alright, not we. _She_ killed them trying to save the theater owner. Stupid. He ended up--I don’t know what you’d call it. It was bad. We should’ve just stuck to putting out the fires afterward--that’s what we were good at. Same result in the end: he ended up gone. But now they’re pissed and summoning demons.”

“Why didn’t she tell me this? Why keep it secret?”

Maker, as soon as he uttered the words, he felt himself cringing. They had treated her as a suspect from the very beginning. After he found out who she was, he’d been all too quick to leap to the worst assumptions. Was it really that surprising that she wouldn’t trust them when the same courtesy had not been extended to her?

“Maybe she would’ve.” Sera shrugged. “Before you went off on her. I was in the bushes for that, can’t say being a total arse helped your ‘trust me’ bit.”

He had heard something rustling in the bushes that night. Apparently she’d been there, spying on them. That thought made him flush--why, he could not say. He was overly prone to flushing as a rule but that didn’t adequately explain the sudden urge to study the floor.

“Sides, the second she told you, you’d run off and tell your friends.” She still sounded proud for ‘catching him out’ as she called it. “Someone’s tipping off that lot. Might be one of yours.”

* * *

 

They rode back to town in a silence Cullen considered to be a gift direct from the Maker given the company. Sera scrapped under her filthy nails with a wicked-looking knife while he removed the pieces of his useless disguise. There was nowhere to put it, so he settled for stuffing pieces of hair, wax, and the void-taken cushion into his borrowed physician’s bag.

As the carriage neared the chantry, he saw a familiar figure standing by the open door of a carriage stopped at the side of the road. Coralina Trevelyan. Andraste preserve him, he’d run into her as they were taking their leave from the gala and she'd become quite...attached. Literally, she attached herself to his arm and refused to let go. The only way to dislodge her would have been to forcibly yank himself away and while he certainly considered it, one look from Josephine told him he’d be better off risking a clinging socialite than a fuming ambassador.

But before he could make himself as inconspicuous as possible, Sera was flinging herself out the cab door and running for the carriage. There was someone inside, he caught a glimpse of yellow plaidweave fluttering from the seat. His chest constricted, a sudden reflex that caught his breath up beneath his ribs and trapped it there.

Before he knew it, he too was out of the cab.

“Captain Rutherford!” a voice exclaimed. Coralina Trevelyan’s hands were already wrapping around his arm and dragging him back away from the carriage. “Oh, it is such a relief to have the services of a _real_ gentleman. This ruffian will not leave us be.”

He darted a harried glance behind the feathered plumage of this infernal woman’s hat to see Sera and a strange man leaning in close over the prone form of a woman wrapped in a familiar plaidweave shawl. But the large ruff of satin ribbon beset by feathers once again obscured his view as Coralina shifted to regain his attention by the sole merit of placing herself directly into his line of sight.

“I can see you are concerned but please do not trouble yourself too greatly on my younger sister’s account. I’ve seen to her care as I always do. She so often finds herself in all sorts of scrapes. Quite a free spirit.”

The woman had a capacity to smile without end. It was most unnerving. Cullen attempted one of his own for the sake of being polite but it twitched at the corners of his mouth with strain. He itched to pluck her fingers from his sleeve and dodge past her towards the carriage. Instead of standing back, smiling for this woman like a nervous simpleton. Had something happened? Who was that man?

There was a yelp of pain and Cullen pulled away from the shackles of her lace-clad grip (she was unexpectedly strong, it took some effort).  “What’s going on here?”

Adelina levered herself up from the carriage floor and met his eyes. She was terribly pale, so much so that the ruddy tangles of hair around her face looked garish. Eyes bloodshot and vivid widened in pain and her blanched lips opened to utter, “Maker’s bloody balls.”

Coralina Trevelyan gasped beside him and crumpled like a wilting flower wrapped in purple organza. On instinct alone, he caught her before she fell to the cobblestones. Adelina followed in suit, only she dropped back to the floor of the carriage like a stone--no fluttering skirts or prim gasps involved. Just a single audible thump that made him wince.

Several things happened at once while Cullen stood at the side of the road, holding an unconscious woman in his arms. Sera began shouting at the man, who had already scooped Adelina up from the floor of the carriage with great care. It seemed that he knew her, judging from the fact that he called her name in an attempt to rouse her. Cullen didn’t care much for the flicker of irrational dislike at the familiarity of the man’s address. He smothered it quickly and found himself left only with the hollow ache of his concern for her and inability to do anything to assuage it.

Then, a figure appeared by the side of the carriage dressed in a Chantry cleric’s robes.

Sister Rosalina looked between him and the man holding Adelina. Apparently discounting him and his cargo, she nodded to the other man and said, “Follow me inside, I have some tonics,” before turning on her heel towards the doors of the chantry.

Cullen could do nothing but stand and watch her retreating back without any instruction as to what he should do with her other sister. Frustration left words sputtering at his mouth, earning him a laugh from Sera.

“Oh my, whatever happened?” said a voice from his arms. Cullen glanced down in time to see a fringe of lashes tremble against tawny skin flushed pink. She had flung her hand up to her forehead as she fell and now used it to artfully cover her mouth. “Captain Rutherford, did you catch me?”

“Regular prince, yeah?” Sera answered instead. “You practice that pish at home? Half feel like I need flowers to toss at your feet. Didn’t buy it for a second but it _looked_ nice and that’s what matters.”

Coralina's delicate confusion vanished in a flash, replaced by a scowl. Remembering him, she hesitated a glance up to see if he had witnessed the transformation from wilting maiden.

Irritated with her ridiculous games, he set her back on her own two feet at once. It was an awkward feat, something like propping up a ladder against a wall given that he was standing and she was lying in his arms. She pitched forward but quickly recovered and set to straightening her clothes.

“I should see to my sister. I do so look forward to seeing you tomorrow Captain. Perhaps you’ll find the opportunity to dance with more than one Trevelyan sister?”

He hadn’t any idea what she was referring to but he had the sinking suspicion that his blissful ignorance would not be long in duration.

Just as Coralina Trevelyan disappeared into the chantry, Sera spun on him and practically shoved him back into the cab they’d arrived in. “No getting rid of that one now and you being around will just make it worse. I’ll go suss out what happened from the Charger.”

He hadn’t spent his day being given the runaround to go back to the Golden Rind without a real plan. And worse: without real proof. Erimond had given him almost nothing and Sera’s word could only be trusted as far as Adelina’s. It wasn’t enough. Not to convince anyone else.

“I still need proof,” he told her. “Paperwork, witnesses, anything.”

“We’re working on it!” she snapped, peevish. “You think that sort of thing just falls into your lap? Probably do, now that I think on how easy you took the bait from that ninny. Just run back to your Seeker and tip her off in person this time. We'll be in touch.”

And she was off.

Cullen sighed. Something in him was raw, worn too thin by bad luck and bad circumstance. Hand in his inner coat pocket, he ran his thumb over the increasingly familiar raised lines of embroidered thread.

Her handkerchief. He should’ve given it to Sera to return it. Strange...he’d somehow forgotten it even needed returning. It felt so _right_ in his pocket, as if it were made to be there, always pressed close.

“Where to sir?” asked the cabbie, more than a little irritably for being forced to wait around the whole time.

“The Golden Rind Hotel,” Cullen answered.

He arrived to find a bellboy strapping a mountain of luggage to the back of a sleek red roadster idling at the curb in front of the hotel. Many of the suitcases were blackened with smoke and familiar--he recognized the Montilyet family crest emblazoned across the leather of a steamer trunk.

“How good of you to join us,” Josephine said as he approached the car, “we’ve leaving tomorrow morning for the Monteagle country estate. I’ve taken the liberty of having the maid launder and press your uniform and dinner jacket. The tailor will be sending along the rest of your new wardrobe directly.”

“We?” Cullen asked, noting the absence of Cassandra’s suitcase.

Josephine sighed. “Cassandra will be staying in town another day. She has obtained Sister Rosalina’s confession and needs to sort something out with her.”

“Confession? To what?”

Josephine paused, then offered the bellboy a smile and a coin. “Thank you, that will be all.”

After he was out of earshot, she answered, “She admits knowledge as to the culprit behind the deaths of the Trevelyan household stuff.”

His heart stuttered. “Who was it?”

“According to the Sister, it was her.”

“That’s absurd.” Cullen was incredulous. The Seeker couldn’t possibly believe that--Rosalina was a child when the maid was killed. “This is an obvious bid to draw our attention away from her sister.”

“We are well aware. Cassandra hasn’t involved the local authorities and she allowed Sister Rosalina return to the chantry. She has no intention of imprisoning an innocent woman for the crime of loving a sister. But the signed confession does present an opportunity for leverage.”

“Leverage? For the family’s cooperation?”  He felt the sudden urge to pace.

“Yes. They haven’t been very forthcoming thus far.”

Cullen’s laugh was short and harsh. “No, I would not attribute that particular trait to them.”

“You look exhausted,” Josephine said. Given her ability to present the best aspect of any situation, Cullen took that to mean he looked like hell. “Come, I’ve ordered supper up to my room for all of us before we depart.”

* * *

 

“How could you go to the sanitorium without telling us?”

There was a ragged, sad catch in her voice and she looked more hurt than angry--although there was no small measure of anger as well, knitting her dark eyebrows together. Her hurt took him by surprise. Not that he assumed the Seeker was devoid of emotion, but he simply did not expect his actions to wound her. He felt small and churlish, ashamed that he had not taken the rest of them into consideration when he agreed to Adelina Trevelyan’s terms.

“It was my impression, Seeker,” Solas said, “when I agreed to assist with this investigation, that we were not completely beholden to the Chantry beyond our duty to maintain the guise of being a mere diplomatic envoy. Is Cullen an exception to this?”

Cassandra looked between them. “Yes, I mean...no, he is not an exception.”

“Was it a lie then? Are we to provide you with detailed lists of our every action? Should we be expected to sacrifice an opportunity to investigate a promising lead all to seek out your permission?”

“That is not what I am saying...I’m merely saying that--” Cassandra gave up and sighed, slumping back in the dining chair.

“I’m sorry, I should have found a way to get a message to you sooner,” Cullen said. He did not wish to flinch away from the truth. And the truth was that he’d acted rashly, foolishly.  “I should have told you about my encounter with Adelina Trevelyan at the gala. Concealing it for the sake of my pride was wrong and beneath me.”

Plucking up her tiny spoon (specifically used for frozen desserts as Cullen had the misfortune of knowing after Josephine’s rigorous etiquette lessons aboard the Anora) Cassandra began to maul what remained of the frozen fruit custard melting into a puddle on her plate.

“Thank you, I do...I appreciate that,” she said, “but Solas is right, your actions were, in part, merited by the circumstance. I only wish this Erimond had been conscious to give a more lucid recounting of his role in this.”

Cullen pushed his own dessert plate aside--he did not much care for the exotic Perivantium fruit that was sweeping through all the fashionable tables in Thedas. “I could return to question him tomorrow. I believe he may be fully recovered from the dose of potassium bromide by then.”

Josephine had something to say about _that._  “A valiant effort Cullen. But, as unpleasant as you find it, the local support for our presence is the only thing allowing us to continue the investigation. We need you at the Monteagle estate. Lady Monteagle was particularly insistent, it would be an unthinkable insult for a member of the Divine’s diplomatic envoy to snub her in such a way.”

“Isn’t questioning Erimond the more pressing issue?” he demanded.

“If you go again, you incur more risk of tipping off The Hand. I think I have a better alternative. Sister Rosalina. She may not be a trained nurse but the facility has it’s own chantry. It would not raise any eyebrows if she were to seek placement there and she would have access to the patients to administer blessings.”

Leverage indeed. Cullen frowned.

Solas raised a curious eyebrow. “You trust her enough to do this? Isn’t it clear the lengths she will go to for the sake of her sister?”

“She believes her sister is innocent, of that I am convinced. I do not think she would go so far if she heard evidence to the contrary. Besides, we are out of options. Leliana still has not responded to our telegrams and we cannot avail ourselves of her spy network. We must make do.”

Cassandra fixed her eyes on the candlesticks burning low and puddling wax onto the brocade tablecloth. They sat in thoughtful silence for several moments before she spoke again, “I am...skeptical to say the least of this tale of the theater and these Friends of Red Jenny. If Adelina Trevelyan was working against The Hand all this time, why is it that all the Trevelyan financial records have gone missing?”

“I don’t know,” Cullen admitted, “but I believe this Erimond will answer that question for us. He brokered the deals after all.”

“Or Adelina Trevelyan herself may answer it,” Josephine said, “and you’re our best chance at getting her to divulge that information. You have her trust.”

“Will she be attending the party at the Monteagle country house as well?” Solas asked.

Cassandra’s spoon winked silver in the candlelight as she drew lazy currents into the yellow liquid that was once her dessert. “Her mother indicated she would attend. Despite the ‘illness’ that confined her to her room for the day.”

“Lady Monteagle confirmed it as well,” Josephine added. “And she was not too pleased about it considering recent events. So, there, Cullen.” She offered him a winning smile. “You have no more cards to play. We will be leaving tomorrow morning and you will be accompanying us.”

As always, Josephine was right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like a terrible tease over the country house party but I did really try to fit the intro to it into this chapter, it was already full to bursting! Also, Cullen and Sera amuse me when they're in the same room. The level of exasperation is astronomical. No reference footnotes. Just thank you so much for reading. This fic is certainly plot-heavy and slow to update, you guys are troopers and I absolutely adore each and every person who reads TCH. If you have a Tumblr, please feel free to drop by or send me an ask or a friend request or anything really at Dulcydine (slight variation on the spelling).


	23. The Spinster and the Cretin

The world was spinning when she opened her eyes. Bookshelves piled high with manuscripts and ancient leather bindings whirled around the periphery of the vaulted ceiling,  as if the entire chantry was a ramshackle carnival ride built on a massive wooden top that was losing speed and about to tip over.

“I’ve seen how quick a few drunks can turn into a mob,” Krem said, his voice ringing down from the maddening sway of books and high stone ceilings. “Knowing her, she’ll give you trouble but it’s too dangerous for her to be walking the streets alone now.”

Everything shifted as Rosa sighed and Adelina felt the heavy fall of her sister’s breath stirring through her hair like worried fingertips. “I can only imagine what might have happened to her if your company hadn’t been there.”

Everything marched along at half-tempo; from the unsteady revolutions of the room to the beams of sunlight pouring in, molasses thick, from the windowpanes. Fascinated, she churned her hand back and forth in the heavy golden swirls while her thoughts spooled out in slow, drifting tangles that floated, ephemeral, in the air as they waited for her to catch them. They were speaking about her, she realized at last.

“What did you give me?” she asked--or intended to ask. What came out was not a question.  Nor was it, strictly speaking, common tongue.

“She’ll be alright, you think?” Krem asked, a note of worry in his voice. “She’s acting...unusual.”

Peering down at her from above, Rosalina pushed her hand away to keep her fingertips from dragging through the liquid light. “It’s a potent tonic. I drink it for migraines and this is perfectly normal.”

Potent indeed. Adelina tasted the lingering bitterness of laudanum under all the sticky sweetness of the syrup still coating her teeth and tongue. Gulping didn’t help, her mouth was too dry to swallow and she nearly gagged instead. But her head didn’t hurt anymore. The pain of her concussion was shut up in a forgotten wing of her mind like an obnoxious houseguest. If she didn’t think too hard on it, she could almost forget it was even there.

Adelina found she quite liked Rosalina’s tonic.

Krem bent down to inspect her closer; apparently he’d been standing beside her the whole time. He still looked concerned and she wanted to reassure him that she really felt quite fine. Better than fine actually. She felt like she’d just danced the allemande after sharing a bottle of Antivan brandy: tipsy, clumsy, and a wretched picture of an instructor tripping over her own skirt and into the arms of her handsome pupil.

Before her eyes, the bookshelves faded into the merry lantern-lit grime of the Chargers’ favorite pub. She heard Bull’s laughter from across the room in response to a bawdy comment from Stiches. But then, when she opened her eyes again, the pub had reverted back to the reverent stone walls of the Chantry. She was hallucinating--from the concussion or the laudanum she did not know which. The sunlight dripped onto her arms, trailing paths of warmth and reassurance; chasing away the worry at the back of her mind. It hardly mattered did it? She felt wonderful.

“You should leave,” Rosalina advised him, “my other sister will no doubt be joining us soon.”

Krem nodded, offering Adelina a hesitant smile. “Everything is settled, my lady. Just stay out of the trouble and we’ll get your man.”

After he left, Rosalina hissed, “I can’t believe you. I don’t care if you have a concussion, I want to slap you for being such an empty-headed idiot. That’s where you went--the _docks_ Adelina? What would Wynne say if she were alive to see you now?”

Adelina said nothing, watching dust motes glimmer as they trapped themselves into the golden syrup now seeping over her chest and limbs as the sun sank lower in the window frame. She wanted to dip her fingers into the bright orb and grasp it like a gob of warm caramel.

She was wearing her favorite tea gown. Odd, she hadn’t remembered changing into it. When did she possibly have the time? She was surprised to find it still fit as well as it did five years ago. The dress was beautiful; peach silk edged in lace, with a film of chiffon that flowed over the silk like cream. It looked like a confection more than a dress. Except...damp splotches of perspiration marred the bodice and grass stains smeared the skirt like week-old bruises.  Darker and more sinister, were the droplets of blood spattered across the hem from her pricked thumb.

Clutching her pitiful excuse for a weapon--a hat pin--she ran. Silk plastered heavy against her thighs, attempting to trip up her feet, and her legs were trembling so much they felt more fluid than flesh. She’d never run this hard in her entire life and years of sitting in parlors sipping tea made her breath come heavy and painful after only a few short seconds.

The long grass behind her rustled and she knew in her bones that she’d soon feel claws sinking deep into her back. Something snapped and her clumsy ankle rolled beneath her as the heel of her shoe lodged itself into the soft earth and broke clean off. She slammed down to the grass, the hat pin flying from her shocked fingertips.

There was a high, clear ringing, like a finger dragging circles around the rim of a leaded crystal glass. Instead of claws, she felt a gust of winter air.

"You'd think one would find less perilous places to explore.”

“Wynne! What are you--”  
  
Ridiculously, through the terror, she cringed like a child caught doing something naughty. Her governess was a formidable woman and Adelina had gone against her warnings to avoid the meadow. Adelina glanced up at the woman standing protectively above her, brandishing a lady’s walking stick that was glowing bright at the brass tip.

Something cracked not far behind her but she was too afraid to glance back at the monster encased in magical ice. Instead, she snatched her feet away from the chilly aura lapping icy currents over her bared stockings.

“The barrier--” Wynne asked and Adelina spared a guilty glance towards her bleeding thumb. Before she could say what she’d done, there was a sound like a hundred windows shattering and then, much quieter, the sound of fabric ripping as Wynne uttered a soft gasp of surprise.

Adelina screamed. Blood spattered the grass by her cheek.

Cold formed a wall that condensed then expanded and shattered so quickly, the shockwave prized her up from the ground and hurled her away. She landed on her back and the air rushed out of her lungs all at once on impact. Winded, she blinked up at the broken sky. Frost crunched beneath her as she struggled through the layers of frozen fabric, attempting to stand despite the inflexible metal of her corset stays digging into her waist. She managed it at last, scanning a glittering expanse of frozen grass before seeing Wynne’s staff crack down on a grotesque demon turned ice sculpture, shattering it.

Adelina raced to her side just as she slumped to her knees.

“Wynne!”

Fingers clamped over her bleeding thumb and Adelina felt a surge of power well up between them. It prickled along her arms like an electric shock.

“Dr. Hawke...said I’d need to know the spell. It would seem...it would seem he was right.”

Adelina was shaking her head, trying to drown out the terrible way the words rattled in Wynne’s throat. She sounded hollowed out. “Don’t use any more of your power, you’re too weak.”

Wynne chuckled weakly, fingers already growing cold. “You’re much too old...for a governess my dear girl.”

And then she channeled the magic into Malcolm Hawke’s spell.

Through the laudanum sea, Adelina watched the woman who had raised her from infancy, die in her arms. But the pain of it was buried beneath taffy-thick warmth. It seemed very far away, as if she was peering at the past through the lens of a spyglass and watching it happen to someone else.

Adelina closed her eyes to block out the images of the long grass beneath the broken sky and burrowed her cheek into her sister’s lap. She smelled like candle wax and paper; it was almost enough to block out the metallic reek of Wynne’s blood.

“Remember Summerday? When Wynne scolded me for picking the flower boxes bare for daisy chains?” she asked, not sure how long they’d spent sitting in silence after Rosalina scolded her. It felt like years had passed since then.

“I don’t understand a thing you’re saying, you’re slurring so much,” Rosalina snapped without heat. Her fingers twisted together the loose strands of hair that had spilled onto her lap into a crown of braids that would keep keep the ringlet of flowers from slipping down her forehead. Adelina saw crowded streets filled with carnival-bright colors and smelled buttery dough fried and roasted in hard candy shells of caramel sugar. “Something about daisies I think. But it was never daisies. We braided geraniums into our hair.”

There was a moment, fleeting and sharp in the midst of the topsy-turvy churn of hallucinations and reality when Adelina felt her sister was about to say something else--something important. But then it was gone, submerged again in the eddies of sunlight and silence.

Cora was calling them.

* * *

 

The Trevelyan manor was a flurry of figures in monochrome bustling in and out of the foyer with armfuls of luggage and massive boxes that could easily fit a full-grown man twice over. Slow to react, Adelina stumbled into a team of maids and the box they carried tumbled to the floor, spilling out yards of glittering fabric.

Cora shrieked as if the maids had performed a blood sacrifice before her very eyes, “My gown! It will wrinkle!”

Adelina spared the maids an apologetic look for invoking Cora’s wrath. But, the opportunity to escape her sister was not one to be missed and she selfishly took it, clumsily slipping away and leaving them to deal with Cora’s meticulous instructions on how to repack the gown properly.

The lamps were on but Adelina didn’t realize her father was dozing on the leather-tufted sofa until it was too late. He startled awake, upending his glass unto his waistcoat. Luckily for the laundress, all that remained in the tumbler was crushed ice; it bounced off the silk harmlessly to scatter over the floor.

“Ada, my pet!” He beamed at her, his cheeks flushed pink with brandy. “Come to take shelter from the storm as I have?”

He was drunk. Adelina frowned and tried to think of an excuse for a rapid exit but none came. Her mind was frustratingly, fumblingly _slow._ And there was a part of her that wanted to stay. The air was rich, heavy with the spice and smoke scent of his tobacco and his eyes were twinkling at her as if they were both wayward adventurers stranded in his oak-paneled study while they waited out a hurricane.

“Come now, close the door before the lionesses sniff us out!” he commanded cheerfully. “Impeccable noses, they have. Not to make any mention of their formidable claws.”

It was easier to stay. Her limbs were still heavy, nerves encased in laudanum. She closed the door behind her after a few fumbled attempts.

Her father collected his glass from the crevice of the sofa and poured himself another measure of brandy from the carafe at his elbow. There used to be a time when he hid his drinking from her...or at least had the dignity to look _guilty_ over it when she caught him. But she’d given up on trying to force sobriety on him a long time ago and he seemed happier for it. The manor crumbled around him but he didn’t care so long as he had a glass of brandy in his hand.

Feeling the pleasant warmth suffusing through her body, she found it suddenly difficult to resent him for it.

“We had an interesting visitor earlier,” he said after replacing the crystal stopper of the carafe, “you missed her.”

“The Seeker?”

“Yes. She was quite interested in a particular business transaction.” His voice was bland, belaying nothing. “Was very insistent on seeing the financial records. Of course, I had no idea what she was referencing, so I gave her the key to my desk and told her to have at it.”

The papers. She hadn’t even remembered to lock them back up the night before. She’d left them out for anyone to see. It was such a remarkably careless thing to do and yet all she could say was a mild,“Oh? What did she find?”

Her father gestured vaguely in the air and wouldn’t look at her. “Nothing. Nothing. Looked ready to murder me over the whole business however.”

That was a puzzle. How could the Seeker find nothing when the papers had been sitting on top of the desk for anyone to see?

Finally he looked at her, sudden tears welling up in his eyes and coursing down his ruddy cheeks.

Adelina didn’t move or speak. She felt like an audience member witnessing an actor on stage botch a well-known line; helpless to do anything but watch.

“I know you are disappointed in me. But you must understand that I was not raised to run this estate. I was the youngest son, my sister--your aunt was the one who was supposed to inherit. And then my elder brother after they took her away...”

She’d been named for her aunt--Ada Trevelyan. Considering that the woman was carted off to the sanitorium where she died a year later, Adelina always felt the namesake was a bit of an ill-omen.

Unsteady, his hand shook and brandy sloshed up and over the sides of his tumbler, but he continued on, paying it no mind, “But then the selfish bastard got himself shot on that expedition. This life was forced on me. I didn’t ask for it. Is it...is it so wrong that I wanted to escape it from time to time?”

If the livelihoods of hundreds of tenant farmers and a household of servants didn’t depend on him and if ‘time to time’ wasn’t ‘all the time’, it’d be fine. But she didn’t say that. He was, after all, a man with good intentions--however far good intentions got someone who lacked the fortitude to attempt anything worthwhile with them.

The tears had stopped at least. “But regardless of my flaws Adelina--yes, I know I am flawed, I am human. But I am also your father. This estate...”

He cleared his throat and sat taller. Leather protested the motion and creaked beneath him. “This estate is not _your_ responsibility Adelina. I know you meant well. But you cannot put holds on your sister’s accounts at the shops or invest my money without my knowledge. This meddling stops now, understood?”

Laudanum still thick in her head, she found it impossible to focus on what he was saying. Instead, she remembered sneaking into this study as a child. It was the one place where she could slouch without reprimand; pull off her gloves without fearing a slap; let her hand sputter green flame without being sent to her room for the remainder of the day. She’d sit at his feet, take a huge draft of the spiced smoke curling from his cigar, and listen to his stories about Antivan opera houses, the expositions of scientific wonders in Markham, Tevinter magisters performing feats of mystery on magnificent stages. He’d seemed faultless to her then. Bigger and stronger and indomitable in the way only fathers can be to children.

How much had changed since then.

Numbly, she nodded and turned to leave the study. As her hand touched the brass, there was a scuffle and thump on the other side. Opening it, she found Cora sprawled on the floor, looking like she’d just tripped over her own skirt while eavesdropping.

“ _You_ put the hold on our accounts?” Cora demanded, standing in such haste, the back of her skirt was still draped over her shoulder like a Tevinter toga. “Now everyone will think we’re poor!”

She didn’t understand that and gaped down at her sister. “We... _are_ poor.”

Beneath the golden cast of her lovely skin, Cora was flushing a furious red. “No one cares about that unless you broadcast it around town; closing shop accounts, wearing the same shoddy things you wore last year. Wasn’t it enough that you refuse to do your part and pretend to be normal for the sake of our reputation? Now you’re flouting our debts? You think anyone will even consider me after this?”

Her voice flattened into a hiss.”You’ve ruined my life. I hope you’re happy for it!”

Before Adelina could say anything, she was gone in a whirl of organza, her words lingering in trembling echoes over the walls.

“Well,” Dorian said, having approached silently from the end of the hall. She hadn’t heard him at all but it was clear that he’d overheard all of Cora’s outburst. “That was dramatic.”

He was the last person she wanted to see. The last person she should trust but the confession spilled out anyway, plied by confused thoughts whirling heavy against her skull. “I didn’t think I would hurt her marriage prospects.”

There was nothing harsh in his voice but the truth still stung. Especially now that the pleasant laudanum haze was beginning to recede. “I suppose you didn’t because you aren’t used to thinking about that sort of thing at all.”

That was true. She was the most ineligible woman in Ostwick. No one expected her to brave the marriage mart for a rich husband; that dubious honor was reserved for her sisters. Adelina exhaled and it felt like sandpaper against her dry throat. “I didn’t exactly have a choice in that.”

Dorian looked at her for a long moment. “Then you are not alone. Few of us do.”

Too tired to argue, or stand, or stumble into another lecture, she excused herself and shambled up to her room.

Not bothering to undress, Adelina collapsed onto her bed and willed away the dreamlike film that still clung to everything. Rolling over with a groan when it did not work, she noticed the sound of paper crumpling in her skirt pocket and fished out note--hastily scrawled on a piece of ancient parchment no doubt filched from the chantry archives.

_‘Erimond at sani--sana--creepy place. Raving mad. Revenge and killing--you get the point yeah? Got keys. Going back alone to get some real answers. Told Captain No Torture enough to keep him out of our hair for a bit. Don't worry--didn't say anything about you know what. Stay out of trouble--DON’T DO ANYTHING STUPID’_

Despite the obvious rush she’d been in, Sera still opted to include a few rude sketches of particular bits of anatomy, rather than include crucial details about what had happened. Did Cullen…

A restless ache furrowed through her with alarming clarity at the thought of him. Cullen. She traced her lips with the loose fingertips of her stolen gloves, thinking of how their eyes had met the moment before she passed out in the carriage. He’d gone pale and tight-mouthed, the muscles in his jaw visibly tense. The man was a hard read, equal parts taciturn and restrained when he wanted to be, and she was halfway out of consciousness but in that frozen moment, she saw something raw in his eyes. Or rather, she recognized an echo of what she felt in front of the bank when the demon that looked like him bled in her arms.  
  
But no, she must’ve been mistaken. It wasn’t as if she’d been in any danger then and even if he had no way of knowing she’d only suffered a concussion, it was ridiculous to think of such a reaction to something so--well, head injuries were never minor but nevertheless, she didn’t think it merited that much concern. Especially from him. Adelina groaned, put it out of her mind, and read through Sera’s note again.

It only confirmed what she already knew thanks to the evidence the Seeker had gathered on the land sales. She already knew Erimond had scammed her on behalf of The Hand and she had already put together that The Hand wanted to revenge themselves on her for the interference of the Red Jennies at the theater.

Her head throbbed. She would have to wait for Sera or the Chargers to bring her more information before she could act. Someone was feeding The Hand information about her whereabouts for the sake of staging the demon summonings and until she new who, it would be imprudent to act. Besides,  Krem was right, she couldn’t risk the streets--at least for the next few days. The mob attack at the tavern had been lucky in that she was knocked unconscious too quickly for the curse to act. She couldn’t count on that to happen again, putting herself in such danger only meant she was jeopardizing the entire city.

The best option, as much as she loathed it, was to wait and recover somewhere removed from the ‘superstitious’ masses...somewhere in the country, surrounded by people who would much rather cut her down over tea than string her up by a noose. Should The Hand attack again...well, at least it would take place in a secluded location filled with men armed with hunting rifles. The Seeker would be there as well and Cullen if Cora’s jubilant recount of gossip on the carriage ride home was to be believed.

And while she waited and recovered, she could absolve herself of some of the guilt laid at her feet by her sister by reprising her role as a model society spinster.

* * *

 

It did not take her long to discover the nasty side-effects of a liberal dose of laudanum-laced tonic. She itched all over as if she’d developed pox, couldn’t eat a bland tea biscuit without gagging, and drifted off into a dreamlike stupor at every inopportune moment despite spending the entirety of her morning dozing in the motorcar on the drive out to the country.

They had arrived late, missing the formal breakfast entirely, and the sprawling green lawns surrounding the house were already dotted with the lace lawn dresses and linen suits of the Monteagle’s more punctual guests.

A contingent of unflappable servants welcomed them, escorted them to their rooms and helped them change out of dusty travel coats (the open tops of the motorcars rendered them all especially in need of a damp washcloth) into the clothing that had been sent ahead the day before. The whole process of making themselves presentable again took so long that by the time they actually emerged to greet their hosts, the outdoor luncheon was already in full swing.

Adelina didn’t miss the side-eyed glances cast her way or the way they lingered on her in search of something amiss. It was all she could do to smile through the bile rising at the back of her throat. Flora had pinched her cheeks for some color before they walked out onto the lawn and now her face both stung and ached with the strain of holding her white-lipped grimace in place.

At first opportunity, she escaped and found a deserted spot in the rose gardens to heave up the few tea biscuits she’d managed to eat.

Despite thoroughly checking the vicinity to ensure that no one was taking in the splendor of the late-blooming roses nearby (imported from Orlais the Lady Monteagle would be keen to say), she heard footsteps drawing close.

“I’m quite alright thank you,” she announced, not turning around and hoping the intruder would take the damn hint and leave her be. Procuring her handkerchief, she dabbed at her mouth and studiously ignored the unwelcome presence.

“I think not.”

Adelina stiffened, nearly dropping her handkerchief at the stab of happiness in her chest--which was quickly swallowed by utter mortification. Maker’s breath, of all the people to witness her retching into Lady Monteagle’s rose bushes.

Turning to face him, she offered up the same weak smile that set her cheeks aching, but seeing him made it vanish entirely. He was wearing his officer’s uniform--an olive serge tunic set with polished bronze buttons that matched the gleaming mabari heraldry pinned to the stiff green triangles of his shirt lapels. The rich leather of his belt, gloves, and boots was well-oiled and shone against the crisply pressed fabric. Beneath the commendation bars pinned above his tunic pocket was a cross pattee in new bronze suspended from a crimson ribbon of watered silk--an Anora Cross for gallantry in combat. Beside it, equally new and shining were his Lothering Star, Victory Medal, and Ferelden War Service Medal.

In his uniform, he stood differently. She was suddenly aware of how very broad his shoulders were. That awareness was accompanied by a fluttering warmth low in her stomach when he drew closer to place a steadying hand at her elbow.

“What happened yesterday? How badly are you injured?” he asked, the rim of his peaked officer’s cap shading his eyes as they scanned her face. At her elbow, his fingers flexed. “You looked very ill at the pavilion tent before before you took off.”

Ah, so he had noticed her rapid departure from the luncheon and followed her. Odd, she had looked for him and hadn’t been able to spot him among the tables. But then, she _had_ been distracted by holding her smile and her stomach at the same time.

“And you claimed no knack for compliments,” she teased gently.

He had the grace to flush. It stood out especially against the green of his shirt collar. “I didn’t meant to--”

“I’ve a mild concussion,” she explained, to put an end to his discomfort. He’d taken her comment a bit too much to heart and she didn’t want any half-hearted attempts to restore her wounded vanity. More accurately, she suspected he wasn’t in the habit of empty flattery, even for the sake of politeness, and didn’t want to watch him dig himself further in.

“There was a--”

A voice called out from across the boxwood hedges surrounding the garden, “Lena!”

They flinched apart as her sister approached as if she had lobbed a grenade at their feet; Adelina practically climbing into the rosebush to establish a proper distance. It was a ridiculous overreaction on her part, given that it wasn’t possible for Flora to have seen them yet. The rustling of the rosebush, however, was perfectly audible and Flora popped out from around the corner of pruned greenery, finding them.

“Oh, Captain!” Flora twirled her parasol. “Perfect, you’ll be our fourth!”

Adelina noticed who accompanied her sister and felt her lips compress down into a hard line. William Penrose. Cretin. By the smugness dripping from his smile, he knew exactly the effect his presence had on her. She should’ve let Sera castrate him after all.

This was payback, she was certain of it. He must’ve discovered that she was the source of the rumors of his venereal disease. Well, she assumed it to be a rumor but given his profligate debauchery, it was entirely possible that she’d stumbled upon the truth. Either way, every maid in the city knew to avoid his seductions. She’d thought it was a perfect solution at the time. Clearly, she was mistaken.

“Fourth?” Cullen asked.

“Badminton. You do play don’t you Captain?”

His hand had dropped away from her arm when they stepped apart and it lifted now to ruffle the hair at the nape of his neck. The look he leveled at her was measured. “Do you really intend to play with your concussion?”

Well she didn’t intend to do any such thing and was about to say so when the cretin Penrose said, “Your sister looks positively consumptive, Flora, I don’t think she’s up for it. Let’s just take a stroll through the woods together, you and I.”

He took her sister’s arm and began to lead her away.

Andraste’s flaming sword, as if she’d leave him alone with her sister. It would be a complete abdication of her spinsterly duties (namely to function as a chaperone). Adelina flashed a feral smile and called out towards them. “A game sounds perfect. I think a little exercise would be very refreshing.”

Cullen turned on her and it was a credit to his self-control that he did not gape. “You can’t possibly be serious,” he said.

“I’m not letting that man out of my sight so long as he is with my sister,” she replied, voice low so as not to be overheard by the two figures walking away from them.  “And it’s not as if I have to play with any effort _.”_

Instead of waiting for him to respond, Adelina walked away. She had a feeling he would only insist she rest and she had no use at all for that sort of excellent, if inconvenient, advice. After a few paces, she looked back over her shoulder to ask, “Well, Mr. Rutherford. Will you be our fourth?”

She regretted her rash decision almost immediately. Penrose kept lobbing the shuttlecock as hard as he could towards her at every possibility during the rallies. Initially, she’d done a fair job of expending as little effort as possible for the sake of her concussion but more and more she found herself lunging and leaping for the returns. Her pride was an abominable beast and it couldn’t just let the birdie sail past her while he oozed smug loathsomeness across the net.

Cullen seemed to be enjoying himself even less than she was, if such a thing were possible. He’d quickly picked up the fact that she had no intention of letting Penrose antagonize her without a fight and so he began intercepting rallies before she could attempt to--which effectively meant he was playing for the both of them. It was a warm day for the season even without running back and forth without end, so he’d shucked his military jacket and cap, rolled up his shirtsleeves to his elbows and loosened the top two buttons of his collar.

That had drawn the attention of more than a few spectators, many of the feminine persuasion. Nettled at the thought of losing to Penrose in front of a crowd of admirers, Adelina retrieved the shuttlecock from the grass before Cullen could manage to make it over. She snapped at him, “I can play for myself, thank you.”

His eyes flashed back at her in kind. “You shouldn’t be playing at all.”

“Yes...well--” she sputtered. Having nothing to say to justify herself to that, she held the birdie just above her racquet and served with a quick snap of her wrist. It cut through the air just above the net, thudding into the grass before Flora could react.

It was a cheap move, she knew Flora wasn’t skilled enough to intercept a drive serve but Penrose’s sullen, sour pout was a thing of beauty. Concussion and sportsmanship be damned, she was determined to see it again. She served again, low this time, but a pulse of light-headedness seized her the moment she swung her racquet. The shuttlecock curved too high and descended slowly towards Penrose, who returned it back towards her with a forceful backhand swing.

Adelina lunged just as the ground canted beneath her feet. Despite the treacherous pitch of the lawn, she managed a shaky forehand swing just before Cullen reached it. She didn’t see if it even cleared the net before tumbling into him. They toppled to the grass together.

He took the full brunt of the fall and got an elbow to the stomach for his trouble. Adelina winced at the pained sound of his rapid exhale and attempted to extricate her limbs from his own. Only, she just made it worse, managing to thwack her head into his shoulder and elbow him in the side before he took hold of her shoulders and pushed her back so that she was sitting across from him on the grass.

“My pride may have gotten the better of me,” she admitted, feeling guilty over the way he was rubbing his shoulder. It wouldn’t have been the first time her competitive nature had wounded an innocent bystander.

The dark look on his face pulled on an invisible thread wrapped around her chest and she added breathlessly, “I’m sorry. Is your shoulder very hurt?”

“It’s nothing--” Looking at her, his lips curved into slow, rueful smile. “I'm the last person to lecture you on competitive pride.”

“So that’s game then?” William Penrose drawled from across the field. “Flora and I take the loss, I suppose we’ll go off and console ourselves in our defeat.”

Cullen’s smile vanished, his jaw working in tense motions, banded muscle drawn so tight against the bone, she could see them flex like cords about to snap beneath his skin. He looked as if he wanted to punch something, or more particularly: someone. Instead, he stood and pulled her to her feet, glaring darkly across the lawn at William Penrose.  
  
She realized his anger had not been directed at her before--at least not the majority of it. Happiness expanded in her chest like a hiccup and she nearly clapped her hand over her mouth to contain it. It danced against her closed lips, tasting as sharp and sweet as the sun warming the dew off the freshly cut lawn. But there was no time to savor it, a spinster must be watchful. She attempted to follow her sister, only to be checked by Cullen’s hand still at her wrist.  
  
“You need to rest,” he insisted.  
  
“I need to chaperone my sister,” she returned, equally stubborn and still more than a little irritable with the thousand itches all over her body now accompanied by fresh waves of dizzy throbbing. The effect of her flashing eyes and set chin was undermined by her leaning too heavily into his clasp but she was not to be deterred from making her point by a little thing like being unable to stand on her own.

“I’ve already had to find positions for four Penrose maids...well, three maids and one girl who worked in the kitchen--after they’d been fired for bearing the physical evidence of his attention. William Penrose would have left them to the streets with his illegitimate children in tow. Concussion or no, I’m not going to twiddle my thumbs while he ruins my sister’s reputation and Maker knows what else.”

“I’ll go after them,” he assured her, “So long as you go over to that shady spot and and _stay there_ until you feel recovered _._ ”

The thought of sending someone else after her sister hadn’t even occurred to her, which was proof enough that she needed to finally heed his advice. So she didn’t argue with him when he collected his officer’s cap and tunic and led her over to the magnificent ash tree guarding the edge of the grass lawn like a ivy-covered sentinel. The shaded area was relatively secluded despite being very close to the badminton net; only a few of his admirers remained and they were busy setting up a game for themselves--cleverly lacking a fourth player. Adelina smiled. They probably intended to try their luck with her clumsy oaf technique. She wished them well in it, although she hoped for Cullen’s sake that they would try it on someone who hadn’t already been elbowed in the stomach that day.  
  
In truth, she hoped a little for her sake as well.

As he turned to leave, she caught him by the cuff of his sleeve messily pushed up past his elbow, “Wait, we need to meet later to discuss everything...” She broke off, thinking. They’d already had their opportunity to be alone and it had been spoiled. It wasn’t likely they’d find another unless they planned for it. Dinner was out of the question, their mutual absence would be missed--but that would be the only time she could trust other eyes to be on Flora.

There was only one other time when Flora would be safely supervised and Adelina flushed furiously to think of it.

Cullen didn’t seem to know what to make of her sudden embarrassment. It seemed to make _him_ uneasy in turn. “You’ve thought of a solution?”

And she thought him witnessing her vomiting in the rosebushes was mortifying. Adelina summarized the dilemma, then took a steadying breath before divulging her solution. Her eyes searched the lawn for her sister, knowing she should just get on with it so Cullen could go after them before they wandered into the wood.

“We could meet discreetly in your room after dinner. It’d be best to avoid the more public areas of the manor at night. There’s always the risk of running into a secret tryst.” That she knew from first-hand experience. She pressed the back of her free hand to her cheek, feeling the heat of her skin burn through the cool netting of her glove. “And my room will...I’m sharing with my sisters so it would be less than ideal.”

Adelina finally spotted her sister in the distance, she was about to wander off into the encroaching treeline. “Hopefully there’ll be another opportunity before then, but that’s...an option at least,” she said.

Unable to meet her eyes, his gaze locked on her hand at his elbow for a handful of missing heartbeats. His head bent, she could see the red flushing the fair skin of his neck and was taken with the impulse to press the back of her hand to it the way she had to her cheek.

After a few unsuccessful attempts, Cullen cleared his throat. “Alright, if you--that is...that might. I--I should go.”  
  
And, still not meeting her eyes, he took off, leaving her alone beneath the ash tree.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical note: it's pretty laughable (and horrifying) how unregulated some of these druggist tonics were prior to stricter regulation in 1914-1920 (depending on the country). For example, after so many people began getting addicted to laudanum, heroin was marketed as a safer and less-addictive alternative for addicts. 
> 
> At last! This chapter was difficult to write because it was so very long but it was so much fun. I'm looking forward to Cullen's chapter for...reasonssss.  
> Thank you for all a thousand times over for the wonderful support for this fic! Now, back to packing for me! I'm moving tomorrow and I've yet to bubble wrap my nail polish horde. You'd think...how bad can that be? How long could it take to bubble wrap your nail polish? The answer to that my friend is: bad. Last I counted (2 years ago) I was sitting at 500ish bottles. I don't buy as much as I used to but I *do* still buy a decent amount so I'd estimate I'm sitting at 800 or so. My fiance has been no help, he just laughed at me and said that I was in a prison of my own making.


	24. The Prisoner and the Dead Man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My endnotes and I are back! (because who doesn’t love their fanfic with a liberal dose of historical trivia, amirite?) A thousand thank you’s to my beta-reading angel/amazing writer, Poppinelle for making this chapter less error-prone and more readable than usual. And a thousand internet hugs for everyone who has commented and kudo’d. I’m blown away by how much amazing feedback I’ve gotten for a fic that has yet to have a kiss 24 chapters in. The fact that you guys aren’t calling for blood means that you’re all angels, too good for this world and for my slow-burn nonsense.

“I couldn’t imagine being in the military myself, even in command.”

William Penrose decapitated a nearby daisy with the lazy kick of his shoe before glancing towards the lady on his arm with a bored smile. His wooing had taken an apathetic turn, as if there was no fun in keeping it up anymore. “They’re dreadfully lax about keeping everyone in their proper place nowadays--field promotions turning out all these farmboy gentlemen. What rubbish--no offense intended of course,” he offered the words over his shoulder to Cullen with the generous air of a man tossing unwanted scraps to a mangy dog that had taken to following him. ”I understand your own rise through the ranks was of the field variety.”

  
Cullen barely checked the twitch in his jaw. It would have been quicker if the man had just come out and said ‘You aren’t one of us and you don’t belong here’ instead of implying it a dozen different ways. At least then, he would have been able to agree and they could finally walk in the silence of two people who wished for nothing more than to be rid of each other. But that would ruin the fun he suspected Penrose was having at his expense.

“It was,” he answered flatly, trying not to give him the indignant reaction he was clearly waiting for--and failing when he tacked on a sharp, “utter shame social hierarchy wasn’t a more pressing concern during all the shelling and gunfire.”

Well, he could hardly help himself, could he? This whey-faced lordling’s moralizing from the safety of an estate in the Marches would have been beyond any soldier’s patience. It had been a warzone, not bloody high tea. What were they supposed to do? Stall a push until another glory-mad second son of a bann came along to lead it?

Between them, Floralina Trevelyan fidgeted before hesitantly venturing, “I think bravery should be rewarded no matter what. Who cares if your father was a bann or a teyrn?”

“Flora my dear, you had no head for these sorts of things.” Patting her hand, he offered her a patronizing smile that had Cullen’s jaw tightening and hers ducking as she fumbled over the right words to place herself into his good graces again. The shift in his demeanor had clearly left her puzzled and wounded; all the smiles had faded and the expressive motions of her hands had long since confined themselves to fiddling with her parasol.

“It’s a matter of _morality_ , maintaining social boundaries in battle. The common man simply lacks the faculties to lead, which is why, in the past, officers have always been gentlemen by birth. You can’t just become either at the drop of a hat...or a helmet or whatever you fellows wore in the trenches.”

“Morality won’t capture a machine gun nest,” Cullen muttered, peevish at himself for letting the man get to him again and peevish that Floralina Trevelyan did not opt to jab the end of her parasol into her miserable suitor’s ribs. But of all the ridiculous pretension... he shot a clump of ferns a dark look and reminded himself that while punching the smile off William Penrose’s face would be _immensely_ satisfying, it would accomplish nothing productive.

At the very least, Penrose was baiting _him_ and not the woman nursing a concussion that left her swaying in the harsh glare of the sun like an elusive trick of the heat. He didn’t know how long he watched her while she took her tea beneath the flapping white tent shading the sumptuous array of ices, cakes, and cucumber sandwiches. He also didn’t want to ask himself why he made sure to do so out of her view with a most persistent ache lodged in his chest the whole time.

Beside him, Floralina Trevelyan gasped and his fingers snapped to his pistol only to fall away once he took stock of their surroundings.

While he’d been distracted in thought, they had wandered into a forest hollow carpeted over with moss and the feathery tufts of spotted ferns. Beneath the linden trees, away from the pale skeins of afternoon light drifting through gaps in the leaves, sprawled thick mats of purple violets. He could no longer hear the distant sounds of the luncheon on the lawn; only the soft mutter of leaves rustling in the warm breeze and the occasional chirp and flutter of birds darting through the sun-dappled cathedral overhead.

“Violets, oh I adore violets!” Floralina exclaimed, dropping Penrose’s arm to examine their find. “Let’s collect some, shall we?”

“By all means, let’s stop and collect every fragrant weed we come across. I couldn’t possibly imagine a better use for our time.” Penrose produced a cigarette from a ornate silver case in his pocket and leaned up against a tree trunk to light it and take a languid drag.

“Oh.” She hid her crestfallen expression by studying the moss at her feet. “Well, let’s just head back then.”

 _At last_. He’d been waiting for her to utter those words from almost the very moment he’d joined them, but his joy was substantially lessened by her dejection. As much as it pained him to delay their return, he strode over to the flowers and knelt down to pluck one.

“My sister is inordinately fond of violets…” he ventured, “of anything, really, that happens to be that color.”

Floralina Trevelyan regarded him with a flash of happiness that reminded him, with a breathless pang, of a handful of damp paper inked with music and a pair of green eyes flecked gold with sunlight. “Then you must send some home to her. They’re lovely pressed. I used to drive my sister Emmalina mad--her monstrous zoological tomes were absolutely divine for pressing flowers.”

Cullen chuckled. “I just may.”

Out of habit, he found himself splitting the stems of the violets with his fingernail, ready to thread them together into a crown for a head of tangled blonde curls. He smiled to himself, rubbing a petal between his fingers. It had been a long time since Rosalie required a flower crown from him, but in the quiet hollow he felt himself slip back through the years to water lapping against the shore; the smell of fresh-cut hay and lake weeds drying on the shore, Mia reprimanding, Bran ignoring her, Rosalie crying about being the afflicted _again_ until he presented her with a flower crown to wear so that she could be both a princess _and_ an afflicted at the same time.

“How perfectly lovely that is!” Floralina peered over at his work, her voice dispelling the scene back to wispy remnants clinging to the corners of his mind.

Cullen glanced down at the violet circlet in his palms and she said, “You’ll have to press the whole thing intact to send back.”

Floralina procured a lacy handkerchief to wrap up what she’d gathered into a sachet. Cullen followed her example, stopping when he saw her brow furrow at his hands, eyes fixed on the edge of embroidered green where the initials peeked out from his grasp. They stood, silent; her amazed and Cullen struggling to find the words to explain--words that didn’t exist. There were no words to explain why he had her sister’s handkerchief. He told himself he carried it only to return it at the first opportunity but that had come and gone with the fabric square still tucked away in his pocket.

“All done, yes?” Penrose asked, appearing at her side and offering his arm with impatience. “Let’s head back.”

“Yes…” she trailed off, drawing out the word until she was finally able to snatch her attention away from her sister’s handkerchief and back to her suitor. Taking his arm, she smiled in a way that reminded Cullen of a tabby cat ready to enjoy a meal of unsuspecting pigeon. “Let’s.”

When they reached the lawn, Floralina setting a brisk patience in her newfound eagerness to return, their group happened upon another trio walking the grounds. Cullen recognized one of the men as the mage from the gala, Dorian Pavus. He had no idea who the woman on his arm was. She did not look happy to see them, but then, she didn’t look like the type of person to be happy about much of anything judging from the practiced feel of her frown. The third was a tall, brooding sort who barely managed to conceal his distressed expression as they approached.  By the tension clinging to them, it was obvious that they’d been interrupted in a serious moment but Floralina Trevelyan didn’t seem to notice that at all, waving eagerly and beckoning them over.

“Dorian! Just the thing, would you all care to join us for a game or two inside?” she asked, dropping Penrose’s arm to latch onto his free one--much to the displeasure of the woman glaring daggers at her.

  
He patted her fingers indulgently, a winning smile at the ready. It looked so genuine, Cullen wondered if he’d imagined the troubled expression on his face when they’d approached. “Of course...but only to see what that devious sparkle in your eye is up to. We’re terribly bored, you see, and whatever it is will certainly be more interesting.” His eyes flickered between Cullen and Penrose as if to say it would also certainly involve either or both of them.

“Devious? I can’t imagine what you mean.” She released his arm to fiddle with her parasol. “We’ll need a seventh and an eighth to play, would it be too much trouble for you to find Adelina before you meet us in the parlour?”

Cullen felt his stomach flip at the not-at-all subtle way her gaze settled on him when she added, “I wouldn’t want her to miss out on the fun.”

* * *

 

The Monteagle’s parlour had been done up in the ‘Orlesian style’, which apparently dictated that every available surface be covered in either pink satin, flocked velvet, or a pastoral scene. Baffled, Cullen examined an inlaid wall panel featuring a shepherdess dressed, improbably, in three tiers of ruched silk petticoats. Had the artist ever been to the countryside? Perhaps even glimpsed it in the distance? It was almost enough to distract him from the woman fiddling with her cocktail garnish to his left. Almost. He hazarded another glance towards Adelina, who’d let the tortured mint slide off the sugared rim and slink into the cracked ice and dry vermouth. She’d regained some color at least, although perhaps that was the work of the cocktail.

Cullen took a nervous sip from his own drink, if just to be rid of it faster, and was surprised to find that it was quite good. Not cloying or heavy. After spending a warm afternoon in wool serge fashioned with Ferelden damp in mind, it was a glass of relief.  Noting his approval, Dorian withdrew from the array of glass bottles on the cocktail cabinet--which was inlaid with illustrated panels of frolicking lambs Cullen had noticed--and clapped him on the shoulder.

“A good cocktail will take you far at these sorts of gatherings--” Dorian trailed off to hand a glass of Starkhaven whiskey to the reticent man silently watching them all with a hint of trepidation. His name was Rilienus Herathinos, Cullen had come to learn, and he was most certainly a mage--as was his sister sulking expertly on the satin divan. Uneasy, Cullen took another drink and tried to keep his smile put.

“Trust me, I’m practically an expert. I’ll have you all know, I owe my continued sanity to Orlesian vermouth.” Dorian gestured with his glass towards a smiling Adelina before downing its contents. “And I’m electing to ignore what your pert smile is currently insinuating about my mental stability.”

“I wasn’t insinuating anything with my smile,” she said playfully over the garnish-free rim of her own drink. “You’re just being paranoid and now you’ve gone and given yourself away.”

Rilienus laughed, an awkward guffaw that he stifled with a hasty gulp of whiskey.

Dorian raised an eyebrow at his countryman, entertained by his show of nerves, before saying, “Well, smile all you like, there is nothing worse than losing money while I can still account for the sad state of my billfold. An empty pocketbook is always dangerous for mental fortitude.”

Their eighth, a ruddy-faced young lordling who happened to be in the room already sampling the brandy when they arrived, slapped Dorian on the back and declared in his Ferelden accent, “I say, I think you’re right about that. Keep them coming, I’m sure to leave this room a poorer man than I entered it.”

Adelina’s eyes found Cullen’s with a bemused glance as he remarked drily, “You might lose less if you were more sober.”

“Now where’s the fun in that?” The man laughed, obviously already feeling the effects of the alcohol as he turned a bleary grin towards them.

Whatever response he had to that was interrupted by Floralina calling for them to take their seats at the table. She took particular pains to ensure that her sister sat at his left. Cullen took a drink, knowing a matchmaking hand when he saw one.

“The game is Dead Man’s Forfeits,” Floralina announced, brandishing a deck of cards. “It’s like Dead Man’s Tricks, only heaps better.”

The lordling banged a fist down on the table, so excited he nearly upended his own drink onto his lap. “Heaps indeed. University chums and I play all the time. I’m rubbish though, end up naked in Andraste’s Bosom more often than I’d like--” He paused for a tick, noting their expressions and puzzled silence before elaborating. “Not the--it’s just what we call the bronze domes in Val Royeaux.”

Cards, Maker, _of course_ it would be cards. Dead Man’s was a trick-taking game popular among the officers and the rest of Ferelden’s upper crust. Cullen never played; he’d lost his shirt (literally, on occasion) in enough games of Wicked Grace with the other enlisted soldiers to know he was better off declining the invitations to play that came from the other officers after his oh-so-immoral promotion. But it was too late to do so now. He took another drink, feeling the pleasant warmth of the Orlesian vermouth loosen the nervous whorls churning in his stomach.

“Dead Man’s Tricks?” Dorian Pavus grinned wolfishly while his Tevinter companions traded a furtive glance across the table. “Sounds rather morbid. Is it a thing like Wicked Grace?”

“Good heavens, no.” Penrose answered, sneering as if he had dropped something disgusting onto the walnut tabletop instead of merely asking a question. “This is a game of _skill_.”

“Charming man,” Dorian mumbled, provoking suppressed snorts from Adelina and Cullen, who sat close enough to hear him.

Floralina explained the rules. They were to play in paired teams and Cullen immediately comprehended the insistence on the very particular seating arrangements, when she breezily suggested that they pair up with the person to their side.

Looking immensely pleased with herself, she said, “Let’s see...so that would be Will and I, Lena and Cullen, Dorian and Rilienus, and then Livia and--”

Choking on his drink when her eyes settled on him, their eighth offered them a bashful grin, “Dreadfully sorry, I never bothered to introduce myself did I? Eustance Morris at your service. But I beg you, just call me Hugh.”

“Shouldn’t we pair the inexperienced players with the experienced ones?” Livia Herathinos objected, eyeing her intoxicated partner contemptuously.

Floralina waved off the suggestion.“Oh, it’s just a silly game, we don’t take it very seriously.”

Livia frowned deeply and said nothing else during the lengthy explanation that had a tendency to wander into confusing tangents littered with terminology Cullen did not understand in the context of a card game--contracts, objectives, auction, East, West, North, South.

  
“But this is where the fun comes in. You see, at the end of the auction, whatever pair has won the least amount of points must complete a forfeit assigned to them by the winning partners. Usually it’s something amusing or a little scandalous.”

Cullen started, Hugh’s naked forays at the University of Orlais now making a great deal more sense. As if losing wasn’t enough for his pride...

“Don’t worry,” whispered Adelina softly, “you have the tactical advantage of being sober.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” he said. From the hazy glow smearing the edges of the room into a melange of pastel, it would seem that he’d underestimated the strength of his drink. “Unless the artist intended that shepherd to be blurry beyond recognition.”

Glancing towards the wall, she smothered another quick-fire smile when she saw the panel he was referring to. “No, but that would be a definite improvement.”

“I’ll deal first.” Floralina declared to them all.

He was less than shocked when they lost the first round badly, just barely edging out Hugh and Livia to claim the most dismal score. Cullen didn’t mind at first, finally catching onto the strategy of the game, but he began to mind very quickly when Floralina clapped her hands together and leaned forward to eye them with something that might have approached pure delight had it not been so devious. “I have the perfect forfeit already. My dearest sister, you will become our heroic Captain’s prisoner. Your wrist must be shackled to his from now until the game is finished.”

Producing a length of ribbon from her handbag, she hurried up and over to their side of the table to wrap their wrists together before either attempted a protest. Not that either could, both too busy coloring and trying to hide it from the amused stares all around them.

“My imprisonment will make playing a bit more challenging,” Adelina said at last and they laughed when, immediately after, her cards spilled out of her right hand to flutter down to the table and prove the understatement.

Despite the handicap of having the effective use of three hands between two people, they were well-matched and took the next few rounds by a mile. Now that he knew how to play, he began to understand her cues, allowing them at last to coordinate a cunning bidding strategy. He’d always prefer chess to cards but this game captured a bit of what he loved about chess--intricate, convoluted strategy spooling feints and attacks out in his mind at least three hands in advance. And unlike chess, it had a cooperative aspect. Every victory was shared and was better having been shared, especially given Adelina’s knack for thinking up amusing forfeits.

He was, it turned out, having fun. More fun than he'd had in a long time--which probably indicated something lacking in his personal life that he didn’t want to delve too deeply into just then-- and it wasn’t just the winning and the lingering effect of a strong cocktail.

Cullen glanced down at his wrist, bound up in yellow satin, feeling the kiss of bare skin as Adelina tugged his arm over to pluck a card from her hand. Their sleeves had rucked up in the process, whispered against each other. Pinpricks shivered up his arm, shoulder, and then, neck. It was difficult to think with them buzzing in his ears; an electric tingle dancing beneath his skin. Not unpleasant, just...he studied Adelina’s profile as she deliberated her play and the pinpricks coalesced into a heady shock branching through his chest like a bolt thundering down from the sky.

He started, jostling her in the process. She glanced at him, perplexed.

“Now just a minute dearies.” Dorian clucked as he adjusted his wide-brimmed hat (on loan for the forfeit and listing dangerously to the side without a pin to keep it straight on his head) before producing the trump card with a flourish and taking the last trick of the round. He beamed at his partner--who was sporting similar headwear but managed to carry it off as if he intentionally chose to wear lady’s hats on occasion. The man smiled, a flash of white teeth against his curling lips, and pressed a fleeting hand against the other’s arm. It was a subtle gesture unmarked by everyone except Cullen, who looked away as soon as he realized precisely what the soft expression was in both their eyes.

“You may have won the hand but we have won the round,” Livia Herathinos proclaimed, a perfect Orlesian accent lilting through the words. She was radiant in her triumph, apparently forgetting that she’d spent the past hour looking for all the Waking Sea as if she wanted everyone in the room to spontaneously combust (perhaps with some help from her). “For the forfeit--” she frowned, then muttered to herself, “--no that won’t do for Soporati.” She looked towards her partner for aid.

Hugh chimed in immediately, spotting the only piece of furniture not in theme with the rest (being that it lacked even a hint of pastel or lambs): the piano, “Zey shall dance a tipsy dance! ‘Ooever plays changes ze tempo constantly and ze dancers must keep up.”

Floralina was thrilled, “A dance!  And Adelina can play.”

“Oh?” Adelina asked, hoisting his hand up with her own in a waving gesture.

“Well, no one else can, so I suppose you’ll have to make do. Unless you can’t fulfill your forfeit...” she trailed off, the lace tip of her glove coming to rest on her chin in feigned thoughtfulness, “...in which case, we’d be forced to think of another for punishment.”

Her tone did not bode well for that might be.

“Well, I suppose we have no choice then,” Adelina said to him and he fumbled with a response, still dazed from the heady feeling from before. He settled for a nod, not trusting his tongue to unravel the knots it had worked itself into now that his mouth had also opted to compound the dilemma by running completely dry.

Interpreting his silence as nerves, Adelina offered him a reassuring smile that only made things worse, really, being that it reminded him of two inconvenient truths; that her expressive eyes were beautiful when she smiled and that he had no business admiring them.

They took a seat together on the piano bench with no small amount of awkward jostling and scooting.

“It’s not as if I have to play well,” she muttered, one hand fumbling with the hinged fallboard that covered the keys.

“The last time I heard you say something like that, we ended up in a heap on the ground,” Cullen deadpanned, lending his free hand to the effort. They pushed back the wooden piece with ease and the effect of her glare was undermined by the traitorous upward turn of her own lips.

“Yes, well, maybe you should guard your vitals from my elbows just in case.”

“Oh believe me--” Cullen found himself grinning as he moved to block his ribcage with his right hand. “I intend to.”

She laughed and instructed him as best as she could before Floralina cleared her throat meaningfully.

“Alright, alright,” Adelina conceded, positioning her hands over the keys as her sister and William Penrose faced each other.

Starting slow, she launched into a syncopated piano rag--an upbeat concoction of Rivaini polyrhythms set into a parade two-step. Cullen did his best not to get in the way. His efforts were successful, but looking up at the dancers, he soon realized by their exaggerated slowness that Adelina had halved the tempo. His realization was quickly followed by her increasing the pace, which resulted in the dancers struggling to keep up (looking tipsy in their stumbling attempt--the intended effect, he gathered) and his clumsy fingers jarring against hers. The piano emitted a discordant jumble before she recovered.

“Oh dear! Apparently the pianist is tipsy as well!” Dorian remarked to his partner, clutching an imaginary string of pearls.

“A disgraceful display of youthful indulgence,” intoned Rilienus.

At the next tempo change--back to half--they flubbed the tune even worse, Cullen having watched her right hand the whole time and expecting it to dance over towards him instead of away. He pulled her hand away entirely in his attempt to anticipate it and she trailed a trilling line over the keys.

A snort of laughter escaped her, then him, when she threaded her burdened fingers back into the melody. But it was a disaster again, the both of them concentrating more on suppressing their laughter than playing.

Floralina pulled away from her partner, huffing indignantly. Whatever her matchmaking intentions for her sister were, her own took priority. “Really! I don’t think this constitutes ‘making do’.”

“No, wait--” Adelina broke off into a full-throated laugh.

“Flora’s right,” Penrose said. “A new forfeit is in order.”

This cheered Floralina immediately but her expression faltered when Penrose pre-empted her, a sharp glitter in his eyes, “I think your gloves may be hindering your playing. You must both remove them.”

Silence plunged through Adelina’s laugh. Instinctively, she moved to shield her hands in the lace folds of her dress spilling over the piano bench, dragging Cullen’s left along without noticing. Her smile remained fixed, but he saw her lips tremble under the weight of it. The rest of her was pale and still, as if hewn out of marble.

He nudged her pinkie with his in an attempt to reassure her.

“That’s not--we don’t play like that Will.” Floralina shot her sister a panicked look and muttered something about propriety.

A leisurely smirk sprawled across his face, stretching his lips up into a grimace of vicious humor. “Come now, they’re only _gloves_ ,” Penrose drawled. “It’s not as if we’re asking them to endure something on par with Hugh’s misadventures.”

Hugh chuckled, too drunk to notice the tension coiling through the room, constricting tighter and tighter. “Gloves are nothing! Unless you have some sort of deformity or a missing finger or--what was the amusing thing I heard earlier today?” Stopping to think for a moment, he left them dangling before slapping his leg with a crack that made Adelina flinch on the bench beside Cullen. “A curse! That was it.”

Floralina laughed, a thin warbling sound. “Oh, that is such a silly rumor.”

Wiggling his fingers at her, he said, “A glowing hand would be right useful, don’t you think? Never lose your way in the dark! Find things that roll behind furniture! But I suppose it might not just turn off and on again at will, I imagine curses are finicky that way.”

  
“I imagine they are,” Penrose said, eyes fixed on Adelina in a way that made Cullen’s fist clench in the fabric of her skirt. “We’ll see in just a moment.”

“What do you mean--” Hugh finally caught on. “Just a minute, you’re _her_ aren’t you? Why, you aren’t a thing like I expected!”

It was clear, the way he said it, what sort of things he expected. Cullen remembered, a sick feeling furrowing into his stomach, every rumor about Ostwick’s famed cursed woman told to him during his short stay. It was one thing to hear them and dismiss them as rubbish, she did not have that luxury. The town had burned but the fire commanded less fear than a woman standing, stunned, in the streets. If they hadn’t lost the crowd--well, he’d known enough doctors with stories about what people were capable of. The sanatoriums, for all their faults, offered protection from _that_ at least.

He moved his bound hand closer to hers, placing his gloved fingertips over the lace netting lining the valleys between her knuckles. It was the best he could do with their wrists bound together.

Ducking his head, he said under his breath so just she could hear, “So, I’m not the only person saving people from conversations about the weather.”

Puzzlement flitted across her face but just as quickly, it was gone; chased away by the memory of her own words to him during their dance.

_‘You’ve single-handedly saved this entire ballroom from a dozen identical conversations about the price of lace...or Maker forbid, the weather.’_

She smiled slowly and his entire body _hummed_ , as if someone had threaded the glowing metal filament of an electric light under his skin. Brilliant gold arced bright in the air between them, a flickering pulse of shared emotion he could not place. It encompassed them, enclosed them away from the rest of the world like a bulb of fine quartz.

“Just another martyr for the cause,” she mused. They were so close, he could count the flecks of gold in her eyes.

A wry chuckle took him by surprise. “I’d be lying if I said I minded sharing the glory,” he admitted.

Penrose cleared his throat impatiently, was ignored, and cleared his throat again with such vigor, it sounded more like he was suffering from a severe chest cold. Adelina flashed the insufferable man a bright-eyed smile before tugging off the glove of her right, bound hand and waving it up like a white flag of surrender.

But Penrose did not have long for his smirk when she put it back on again, saying when he began to protest, “You didn’t specify that they needed to _stay_ removed.”

The man gaped, flushed while Floralina’s laugh trilled delight through the air. Seeing his face, she made an attempt to appease him, “Oh Wills, you musn’t look so. You can’t imagine how often Lena’s wriggled out of my forfeits that way.”

Unappeased, he glared viciously at the rest of them before declaring it was time to dress for dinner and flouncing out of the room.

“Charming fellow,” Livia Herathinos muttered.

* * *

 

Cullen paced the room, fiddled with his dinner jacket collar, and paced some more.

  
Dinner was an opulent affair. The Monteagles had stuffed several round tables into a ballroom just as tastefully decorated as the parlour. Each table had been decorated in a single color--Vyrantium glass bowls overflowing with pineapples, daffodils, and narcissus for one; an avalanche of violets and dusty grapes in cut crystal vases for another. Instead of letting their guests sit where they wished, the hostess opted to have them all draw strips of paper from a punch bowl. Cullen drew a paper with the riddle ‘There are no words for which this rhymes’ on it and spent his dinner seated with ten complete strangers (and Livia Herathinos who was happy to treat him as a complete stranger anyway) at a table sporting a tall wire pyramid beset with Seheron lilies and miniature oranges that kept escaping the structure and rolling onto the plates of the unsuspecting diners.

He’d barely a chance to speak to Josephine before she was shuffled off to the ‘lazuli’ table and only caught a glimpse of Adelina; across the room at the ‘carmine’ table and obscured by a massive porcelain vase hemorrhaging great red gouts of roses and raspberries. Discussing anything with her was out of the question--between dressing for dinner, dinner, and the after-dinner amusements involving more slips of paper in punch bowls, he’d barely had the time to say two words to her after they left the parlour.

Cullen adjusted his collar, then gave up on the effort entirely and shrugged it off with a grunt of frustration. It feel to the floor in a pile of black cashmere and he immediately regretted the action. Surely any state of undress would be far too improper.

Not that he had any idea what constituted proper for this sort of thing. Josephine had neglected dressing instructions for clandestine meetings with women in his bedroom in the middle of the night.

“Maker’s breath,” Cullen muttered, retrieving his dinner jacket-- the flower at his buttonhole hopelessly crumpled from his careless removal--and put it back on again.

He couldn’t help but feel ridiculously overdressed, but he supposed it was better than the alternative. Wasn’t it?

  
There was a knock at the bedroom door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endnotes (because I’m a nerd, hello):  
> 1) Prior to WW1, officer ranks were exclusively reserved for only particular social classes (puts the whole ‘officer and a gentlemen’ bit in context huh?). But WW1 had such high attrition rates due to changing technologies (machine gun, mortar guns) that battlefield promotions opened up ranks for ‘the common man’. There was some considerable backlash against these ‘temporary gentlemen’ outside the battlefield--those on the battlefield had other things to worry about. 
> 
> 2) Gin fizzes and other drink inspiration was taken from my favorite Las Vegas steakhouse/old-fashioned speakeasy that specializes in early cocktails and makes a killer Aviation. I also referenced Edwardian promenade just to be thorough...(link with recipes)  
> http://www.edwardianpromenade.com/food/edwardian-cocktails/
> 
> 3) Dead Man’s Tricks sounds to me like a trick-taking card game so, I decided to make it the Dragon Age equivalent of bridge. The Edwardian era was nuts over bridge. I’ve never played and the rules sound like a nightmare but I do love the strategy in trick-taking card games.
> 
> 4) Games of forfeits were usually tagged onto other games as funny repercussions for failing. I referenced Mary Blain’s book ‘Games for Halloween’ published in 1912 (and available on Kindle) for ideas but just ended up making own for the most part.
> 
> 5) The parade of obscure DA characters continues! The Inquisition quartermaster, Eustance Morris, joins the fray.
> 
> 6) It wouldn’t be Edwardian without ragtime! Popularized by Scott Joplin and other African-American musicians, ragtime borrowed on African polyrhythms and European classical marches and in turn, influenced classical composers like Debussy. 
> 
> 7) I referenced the ever wonderful Edwardian Promenade website for dinner ideas, mixing in a little of the Progressive Dinner because I couldn’t resist how decadent it sounded


End file.
